Being a fan of Bissell's videogame reviews (for the defunct Grantland), and of his other works, I had hoped for the book this sometimes seems to promise: an exploration of why video games capture something of one's attention in spite of all of the things that feel wrong about devoting time to them. And at times, it approaches the point at which the game-player's life, the author's life and art, and the interactive nature of the form intersect, and then (the writing) caroms off of the idea that there can be moments there that are profoundly meaningful to one specific player in a way that a movie or book, by nature, can not quite achieve because they are completely authored.

But there isn't much exploration of that; instead it is mostly anecdote about times and ways some specific games caused those sorts of moments for him, Tom Bissell. Which isn't to say that it isn't interesting, but it has a "book on a deadline"-"let's make some money"* talking about a thing I love, feel that the rest of his oeuvre that I've read does not.

* A la Bitch by Elizabeth Wurtzel ( )

I'm not nearly serious enough about gaming to appreciate this book. However, I got enough out if it that I'm glad I finished it. ( )

Self indulgent ramblings by a childish self confessed cokehead. The only amazing feat this book accomplishes is sounding pretentious without actually claiming anything grand. ( )

This is an extremely thought-provoking and well-written book and could be read by any writer looking for insights into writing (and not just for video games). What can story-tellers learn from the gaming world? The question of story is increasingly occupying the video game industry, as was made clear by a resent NYT piece on the new Gears of War release that features this author as one of the game creators (he is apparently getting less into playing and more into game-creation). Some take-aways:

1. Writers of fiction devolve action out of character; writers for games devolve character from action, essentially imposing character on top of code. As Bissell writes, gamers resist having any predetermined character set that will “interfere” with “total play,” essentially being the “agent of chaos in the video-game world.”

2. Bissell praises some game writers for “narrative minimalism,” where a player left (for example) in a zombie-infested world has no greater goal than survival. These games refuse “to explore the who, what, why, or how of its zombie citizenry” (41-42).

3. Bissell also makes a distinction between a set frame (zombie apocalypse) and the “ludonarrative,” the modifiable steps a character takes between points A and Z, always changing and shifting but inevitably ending up in the preset terminus. Perhaps there’s a parallel with genre, in which a thriller is a set frame with a ludonarrative that shifts given the protagonist and setting. There are certain things genre narrative must doi, just as there are limitations (at least for now) in on-line games.

4. One of the most interesting points Bissell makes is that players can feel real emotion and engagement with a game. But often, that doesn’t come from the game itself but through the experience of playing and bonding with other players while game-playing. After a particularly harrowing sequence of “Left 4 Dead,” when Bissell abandons his on-line teammates to a savvy zombie horde, he is shamed into risking his character’s life to save surviving players. “At great personal risk, and out of real shame, I had rescued two of my three friends and in the process outfaced against all odds one of the best Left 4 Dead teams I had and have ever played against. I realized, then, vividly, that Left 4 Dead offered a rare example in which a game’s theme (cooperation) was also what was encouraged within the actual flow of gameplay… all of the emotions I felt during those few moments – fear, doubt, resolve, and finally courage – were as intensely vivid as any I have felt while reading a novel or watching a film or listening to a piece of music. For what more can one ask? What more could one want?” (46-47)

5. For the most part, the characters in games don’t change through play; they are the vehicles of exploration (80). However, players can change as a part of their interactions with other players. So the story unfolds in the space of the player as a character within the framed narrative, because of his "ludotropic" and unpredictable actions.

6. The act of playing with others is profoundly different from reading, even if you read the same book and discuss it later in a class or with a friend or in a book club. A key part of gaming is increasingly that it is not only a shared experience, but that a central part of the experience is the competing against or bonding with others, even those you only know by their silly online names.

7. Games don’t pose arguments, they present systems with which to interact” : Video game critic Chris Dahlen. But fiction starts with the variables, not the system (Bissell). These are “very different formal constraints" (86).

8. Until recently, games have lacked the “stickyness” comes with emotion, when characters really stick with you. That, though, is also morphing with games like Bioware's Mass Effect and Rock Star's Grand Theft Auto IV.

9. I wonder if the new motion consoles, like the Kinect, will lead to players actually inhabiting and speaking for their online avatars?

Ludonarrative (from Wikipedia): a portmanteau of ludology and narrative, refers to the aspects of video game storytelling that are controlled by the player. It is contrasted with fixed or embedded narrative which are the purely narrative, non-interactive aspects of the game that are determined by the game's designers and told through cutscenes or other related devices. Ludonarrative is considered an essential concept in videogame theory

( )

I think this books title is wrong. I read through this whole thing, which is written like someone studying for the SATs - littered with large obscure words for no other reason then to use large obscure words, and I still don't know why games don't matter. Perhaps a better title would have been "Why Video Games Matter to Me" or perhaps "Good Writing makes Good Games."

The book gives a brief history of the top games of the last decade (2000-2010) and talks about why they were the top games. It also includes several interviews with game designers about the choices they made and what they think makes good games. It's a lot of good information if you don't know much about console gaming and want a background of the best in the industry. However, the writing includes a lot of references to geek and pop culture which would go over the heads of people that would benefit most from that information.

So if you are looking for something that talks about video games and it's impact on culture, this is not the book for you. If you want to read about someone who played a lot of video games and what he thinks of them... then this is your book. ( )

There are several moments that made me laugh out loud, especially when the author related his first experience with Resident Evil and the godawful voice acting. Other than that, it seems as though the author is trying to relate what video games mean to him, and by extension, society.

Most of it questions what a video game is exactly and tentatively replies that it is art. Being a person that has enjoyed a fair number of video games, I thought this book would be up my alley, but I didn't like it as much as I liked The Ultimate History of Video Games. It is interesting, but not really what I wanted. ( )

In 1972, Magnavox introduced Odyssey, the first home video gaming system. It spawned a medium that eventually dominated nearly every aspect of popular culture. Tom Bissell explores the esoteric universe of modern video games in the engrossing Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter.

From his real-world perch, Bissell reveals the often surreal aspects of the gaming world. He tackles game design, corporate machinations, gender politics, social interactions, convention etiquette, and yes, even player experiences. Culturally aware, Bissell crafts his portrayals and commentaries with style and panache.

In the opening chapter “Fallout,” Bissell offers the first of many accurate and amusing game descriptions:

Fallout 3 bravely takes as its aesthetic foundation a future that is from both six decades old and one of the least convincing ever conceptualized. The result is a fascination past-future never-never-land weirdness that infects the games every corner: George Jetson Beyond Thunderdome.

He concludes the initial chapter with this thought-provoking perspective on his goals for Extra Lives.

I am uninterested in whether games are better or worse than movies or novels or any other form of entertainment. More interesting to me is what games can do and how they make me feel while they are doing it. Comparing games to other forms of entertainment only serves as a reminder of what games are not. Storytelling, however, does not belong to film any more than it belongs to the novel. Film, novels, and video games are separate economies in which storytelling is the currency. The problem is that video-game storytelling, across a wide spectrum of games, too often feels counterfeit, and it is easy to tire of laundering the bills.

Bissell introduces the various complex video game play and design elements, waxing poetic from his roles of journalist, philosopher, and fan. For each of the nine chapters, he unfurls different components while centering on Bissel-guided, player perspective tours of popular video games. Filtered through his unique lens, Bissell interviews animators, writers, programmers, marketers, reviewers, and game players. In Chapter Five “Littlebigproblems,” we accompany him to DICE (Design Innovate Communicate Entertain), the annual summit for the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences held in Las Vegas, which affords Bissell another chance for observation.

Like any complicated thing, however, video games are “cool” only in sum. Again and again at DICE, I struck up a conversation with someone, learned what game they had done, told them I loved that game, asked what they had worked on, and been told something along the lines of, “I did the smoke for Call of Duty: World at War.” Statements such as this tended to freeze my conversational motor about as definitively as, “I was a concentration camp guard.”

As Bissell unveils the layers of his chronicle, each more seductive than the previous, the true meaning behind Extra Lives becomes apparent. Bissell ultimately compiles an insightful study on the nature of obsession in general and his own in particular.

These days, however, I am lucky if I finish reading one book every fortnight. These days, I have read from start to finish exactly two works of fiction—excepting those I was not also reviewing—in the last year. These days, I play video games in the morning, play video games in the afternoon, and spend my evenings playing video games. These days, I still manage to write, but the times I am able to do so for more than three sustained hours have the temporal periodicity of comets with near-Earth trajectories.

Bissell manages to produce an image of a popular but little understood media in an entertaining and intriguing manner. Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter offers far more than just a mere education on video games, but a treatise on creativity, business, and obsession that should appeal to everyone, regardless of personal interests.

This review first appeared at RevolutionSF, August 6, 2010. ( )

As a gaming aficionado myself this is a book that I read through from cover to cover with very few pauses in-between. Gaming as a hobby / interest is still something that many people don't necessarily approve of as a good use of time and anyone who loves games even more than a little bit must by necessity be a bit strange. In some cases they are right as not every game out there deserves anything more than a second of your precious time but the same can be said for movies or books or music.

What makes gaming unique when compared to a lot of other industries out there is the amount of control we as consumers of that medium are able to exert. Of course most games are strictly plot driven games that don't allow you to dictate the plot to any large degree other than choosing to be 'good' or 'evil' and selecting between two or three separate branches that might be offered to you. Nonetheless what they do allow you to do is take an active part in the telling of that story by creating your own stories within their worlds. Most of my fondest gaming memories are tied to open game worlds such as SimCity, Far Cry 2 and numerous others that let you go from point A to point B by way of point Z with little to no restrictions on how to go about it.

And the best thing about the gaming industry having been around for as many years as it has is that the older it gets the more maturity there is to find in it's offerings. For every game that has no semblance of plot other than shoving a gun in your hands and asking you to mow down hundreds upon hundreds of identical looking bad guys there are two or three sublimely crafted 'experiences' that see you trying to save your son from drowning be trying to survive a serial killer's tests of your parenting (Heavy Rain), dealing with the atrocities of violence and it's justification (Spec Ops: The Line) and contemplating your death and what you've done with your life (Dear Esther).

After blathering on so much how does this have anything to do with Extra Lives? Well these are the sorts of things Tom Bissell seeks to answer. These are the questions he works through in the book and using his own life and experiences with gaming he tries to tell us whether gaming really matters. Of course it's not a simple black or white answer. For every person out there there will be a gray answer that determines whether gaming has had any affect on their lives. What this book can definitely say is that no matter how we might want to believer otherwise, gaming is here to stay and can provide us with some great moments that can be shared between gamers and non-gamers alike. If you've ever played a game of Pong or Dragon's Lair and lost yourself in a world of the game developers creating then pick this up and rediscover some of the wonders that gaming can bring to young and old alike. ( )

Skimmed most of it. Blog-quality writing. Serious lack of depth and content for someone as snotty as he seems to be. Don't bother reading this one. ( )

A book nominally about the art of video games - not the art of design, not the art of the screen, but the intrinsic artistic value of video games. Bissell has two criterion for a work to be considered art: it must emotionally affect the audience and it must claim something higher than itself really. For example, the bloody horror in Apocalypse Now does have some greater meaning, both in the emotional import of the storyline and the morality tale it portrays. Call of Duty blows stuff to smithereens. In that sense, Manhunt, a snuff-fetish like game may be considered emotionally affect (he says he quit playing it was so skeezy, but doesn't hold greater meaning. I applaud him on his analysis of games so far, but believe the true value of maodern gaming is in the social interaction that Halo and WoW offer, not the narrative.

That being said, I truly believe also that this is a lightly veiled love letter to and trying to explain away cocaine addiction.

Bissell tries his hand at video game criticism (vs game reviews). He writes extensively and personally about themes and gaming mechanisms as opposed to pixel counts and fps measuring The book suffers from slight chapteritis, meaning it doesn't really come together as a whole. ( )