Book Options
I’m positive this comes as an absolute shock to no one at all, but I’ve selected two books about video games for this brief review. There are, after all, very few times that you’re afforded this sort of indulgence for a school project.
Joking aside, I was actually very pleased (and yes, even a little excited) to discover that this medium is beginning to receive the serious scholarly attention it deserves. And if nothing else, there are few things as cool as cracking open a textbook and seeing a screenshot of The Legend of Zelda offered up as academic evidence. So, without further ado…
Play Between Worlds: Exploring Online Game Culture (T.L. Taylor, 2006) is both an introduction to and a guided tour of the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), which has gone from being an internet phenomenon to almost a cultural touchstone. More specifically, the object of scrutiny is Everquest – a sensible choice for the year of publication and still generally relevant for today (although the current MMOG of choice is undoubtedly the Blizzard juggernaut World of Warcraft). The author, however, does more than simply explain the rules, mechanics, and terminology of the MMOG; she really examines everything with a researcher’s eye, with especial care to the nuances of player interaction and how they collaboratively shape the game experience (perhaps more so, at times, than the game designers themselves). She also appears to have a special interest in the changing demographics of MMOG culture and even dedicates an entire chapter to female gamers. The Amazon reviews aren’t wrong to point out her fondness for academic language and complex sentences, but the text is certainly readable. And hey, MMOGs are kind of a complex subject, so it’s appropriate that T.L. Taylor is approaching the genre as such.
As a research source, Play Between Worlds is easy to recommend for anyone interested in the social component of modern gaming. It may also be of interest for anyone studying technology demographics. It’s important to note, though, that the book is extremely precise in scope – the MMOG is only a single genre of the medium, and not even close to representing the entire spectrum of multiplayer gaming. Just think of the differences between, say, World of Warcraft and Team Fortress 2.
Whereas Play Between Worlds is almost entirely concerned with how a certain genre of games affect human interaction, Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Jesper Juul, 2005) is a gleefully philosophical appraisal of the medium as a whole. That’s an immense task of course, but Juul covers an impressive amount of ground in the space he’s given. He not only situatates the modern video game in a classic gaming model, but also exhaustively analyzes the links between game rules and virtual fiction. There are plenty of other cool ideas here, from analysis of games’ effects on their players to an examination of the concept of time within the game. The scope is both broad and impressive, encompassing the timeline from the early arcade days to the then-latest “sixth generation” of console games. (He even relates modern games to classical pastimes like chess and the ancient Egyptian senet!) The icing on the cake is that the text is delivered with clarity and precision, complete with numerous screenshots and diagrams to illustrate ideas and concepts. Overall, it seems like a fascinating read and even more persuasive evidence that games are an emergent and incredibly powerful means of expression in the digital age. Thoroughly gratifying for the initiate and still accessible for the layperson.
The only thing that troubles me is that the book is three years old now. Sure, that seems very recent (and no doubt the discussion within is still incredibly relevant), but video games are a fast-changing medium and the past few years have been chock-a-block with momentous shifts in the industry. I can only imagine Juul’s take on the Wii’s revolutionary control scheme, groundbreaking games like Bioshock and Portal, the rising prevalence of online gaming, and innumerable other current topics of interest.
Quibble aside, Half-Real still seems like a thoroughly absorbing text. As a research source, though, it is far more concerned with game theory and philosophy than their social elements. This would obviously make it a natural choice for a project examining games in general, but it would be of limited use for a project concerned with how multiplayer games mediate human interaction.
But c’mon now. Super Mario and senet in the same book. That’s just plain cool.
Addendum (revised February 8th)
I apparently neglected one of the important parts of the analysis – namely, are these books argumentative? It’s questionable at first glance; Taylor devotes much space to chronicling her experiences, while Juul is mostly concerned with game theory. With this in mind, though, Taylor seems to cover a series of implicit arguments, as she’s situating her experiences within a context and then considering the social ramifications of the MMOG. It’s a much tougher call for Juul, though – maybe you can say his theory is itself an argument (games could be defined another way, I suppose), but his highly analytical approach might make it more difficult to work with for this kind of project.
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