Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter (2024)

The title of this book is Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter. I normally wouldn’t begin a review with such a mundane sentence, but it is vital to understanding my reaction to the book. The eponymous question is never answered in this volume. The question appears to be an “excuse” for publishing the most self-indulgent essays I’ve read since some of my reviews on this site. At least, Bissell is honest about his bias against PC games. I can understand that. It’s very clear from the games that he has decided to cover that he is a total first-person shooter player. He knows platform games as the Ur-video game, but outside of Fallout 3, Braid, and Resident Evil, he waxed most prolifically about Left 4 Dead, Gears of War, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto—all, arguably, essentially first-person shooters. Yet, all of these are interesting accounts of his experiences in and impressions of the games while none of them indicate why the games might matter.

Indeed, it often seems as if the title should be Extra Lives: Why Video Games Don’t Matter. His prose is full of sneers like, “One might argue that critical writing about games is difficult because most games are unable to withstand thoughtful criticism.” (p. xii) Although he claims to have moved beyond an earlier essay that he quotes (“…no video game has ever crossed the Rubicon from entertainment to true art.” p. 35), he “hesitates” to call Bioshock “legitimate art” on the self-same page. He is even more condescending when it comes to game writing (predominantly speaking of dialogue) and the game press.

In terms of the game press, he quotes embittered developers as saying, “They don’t review for anyone but themselves” and “Game reviewers have a huge responsibility, and they abuse it.” (p. 73) The former having been leveled against critics in every field and the latter being something that is generally true. When I edited the premier computer game magazine (some have kindly called it the “gold standard” of PC game journalism—though that might have simply implied that my editorial style was anachronistic), I felt it was important to communicate what the game was like in order to let the reader make up his/her own mind. To do this, I tried to fit the right kind of reviewer to the right kind of game and to ensure that the reviewer at least acknowledged what the designers/development teams were “trying” to do in the way they made certain choices. Those choices might not have worked, but the reader would be capable of deciding whether those choices put her/him off or not. I didn’t feel like many of my competitors approached reviews in that way.

In terms of game writing, he refers to: Fallout 3’s dialogue as so appalling as “…to make Stephanie Meyer look like Ibsen.” (p. 9) and Resident Evil’s dialogue as “bad enough as written,” (p. 19). He claims that he will accept “crudities” in games that he would never tolerate in any other art form. There is a theme of the frustrated, would-be game writer that runs through the book. He continually asks the interviewees why they don’t use more writers or pay more attention to writers (with the exception of his discussion of Bioware and interview with Sir Peter Molyneaux of Lionhead in the appendix). It seems pretty disingenous for a writer to complain about the quality of writing when it is overtly clear that said writer, published in several “linear” modes, really wants someone to offer him a job.

My favorite quotation in the book is when Bissell describes the evolution of video game graphics. He writes, “…early video games such as Pong and Spacewar! Are, developmentally speaking, cave paintings, whereas Tempest and Pac-Man are something like modernism, albeit a modernism of necessity. Within the evolution of video games, no naturalistic stage between the primitivism of Pong and the modernism of Tempest was possible due to the technological limitations to which game designers were subject.” (pp. 99-100). About the center of the book, Bissell admits that video games have improved on almost every level—aesthetic, characterization, dialogue, and emotional appeal—but insists that games started at a degree of minus efficacy (pp. 86-87). He’s right on both of these counts, but his entire book puts me off because even his compliments are designed to set up his offensive sense of superiority over the subject matter he is covering. That is why I cannot recommend what could have been an important book. As a former game journalist, I can only say, “God forgive me for any occasions where I held my subject matter in contempt.”

Though I don’t play as often as I used to, I consider myself a gamer. I like the idea of someone unpacking the idea of why video games matter, and I think that topic would make for a good book. Unfortunately, Extra Lives is not that book. The problem is not that I necessarily disagree with Bissell’s opinions on whether or not games matter – the problem is that the book really isn’t about that topic at all.

The title is more than a little misleading. While Bissell doesn’t spend much (if any) time discussing why video games matter, a significant amount of time is spent detailing the aspects of narrative-based games that Bissell finds problematic. More often than not, this hinges on the writing in the games – the subtext of which seems to be that the author believes games would be a whole lot better if the industry employed more people like him. Bissell gives the impression that he thinks rather highly of himself, and finds many opportunities to remind the reader of his accomplishments, in-game or otherwise.

The result of all of this, unfortunately, is that the book is an infuriating mess. Bissell is so self-satisfied, his writing so masturbatory, that I found myself actively disliking him not far into the book – and it only gets worse with each subsequent chapter. When he isn’t implying that the video game industry needs more Tom Bissells, he’s going on, for page after page, about how he plays specific games. Now, I like video games, believe you me – but reading about why he played his Mass Effect character the way he did, or his description of playing Resident Evil for the first time, is painfully boring.

As I alluded to earlier, I really wanted to like this book. It’s a shame that there’s so little there to like.

Suggested alternate title: Tom Bissell Presents The Tom Bissell Story (In Which Video Games are Played)

I'm a gamer, plain and simple. And what I find funny and part of the reason why I wanted to read this book is that, unlike movies and books and music, I can very seldom find myself in a position to have a conversation about games without feeling like a child or just plain awkward. For the life of me, I really don't know why. I have played games which have entertained and moved me just as deeply as some movies, books, and music. So why are Video games still the bastard child of entertainment?

Extra Lives attempts to touch upon this question as well as analyze the media's strengths and weaknesses in character design, narrative, etc. in comparison to the other medias. The writing is very analytical and intellectual, giving me flashbacks at times to my days as an English Major, reading through literary journals for paper ideas. The book does a great job of introducing concepts to readers who have not played alot of games, so anyone interested in the topic can walk away with something, regardless of background knowlegde. But what I think I was most impressed with is Bissell's ability to help me look at games I have played in a brand new way. Many of the games he discussed in the book I have played, and he brings up so many fascinating questions that have really changed how I look at some of the experiences.

In the end, I am really glad that I read this book and am glad that books like this are simply out there. Video games are really the weird kid in the class when it comes to respected medias and it really shouldn't be the case. Just like there are mindless movies and mindless books, there are, ofcourse, mindless games. But also just like books and movies and music, there are real things that can be taken away from video games. Because it's still a relatively new media, this idea really isn't understood by the masses. But as the gamers of old become adults and the media continues to become more widespread, I think a time will come where a conversation about Animal Farm will be just as respected as a conversation about Bioshock. And it will come thanks to books that point out the importance of the media, just like Bissell's extra lives.

One of the most consistent criticisms I see in other negative reviews of this book is that Tom Bissell's tone is puzzlingly ambivalent. I have to unfortunately agree with this criticism, as after I finished the book the only take away I had from his argument was that games have (apparently) a myriad of structural problems that seem (to him) almost impossible to surmount. I find this really strange, as although I tend to favour arguments that don't neglect the weakspots/blindspots of their subject, Bissell's subtitle to the book is "why games matter." I didn't come out of this feeling as though I was convinced of this thesis statement, as it felt as though the author didn't have much faith in his own argument. In fact, more than a month after having listened to the audiobook, I don't feel that his argument was very enlightening at all. If anything, it made me feel rather pessimistic and uninspired about the next generation of games, and I don't think that was the intended aim of the book.

I really wanted to like this book. I love the idea of discussing how we could improve games and particularly narrative-driven games. Yet the only sections of the book that I found worthwhile were the parts that focused on veteran game designers' POVs and not the author's. His interviews with Cliff Bleszinski (Gears of War), Johnathan Blow (Braid), and Peter Molyneux (Fable) to name a few were the most informative on the attitudes and trends of the current video game industry towards designing narrative-driven games, and what designing games is like today vs. during the inception of the games industry.

Another problem I had with this book had to do with the author's strange tone of voice. At numerous points of the audiobook I felt as if the author was talking to a predominately male audience. I found this alienating, as it felt as if I was overhearing his argument from an exclusive group huddle. Weird seeing as he started out the book targeting an audience of critics who may not have much experience with videogames. Even weirder seeing as over 40% of the gamer crowd is female. That's not to say I was expecting to read a book that absolutely represented every single gamer (that would be a little unrealistic and unfair), but I at least expected to read a book with a bit more of a neutral voice. Some quotes I actually had to write down or make mental notes of to insert into this review because they struck me as not only awkward, but sometimes offensive in a "too-much-information" way. Such as Bissell's musing over how he "liked the corporate diligence the upper-tier prostitutes who worked the casino bars" in Las Vegas (why do I care?) and how he saw so many attractive women working at Ubisoft Montreal he wondered if Ubisoft ran an escort service on the side (the logic of that one escapes me). Despite dedicating the book to his two nieces, who he often plays games with, I found Bissell's tone odd and often disconcerting.

I also found it strange that almost every game he chose to talk about, was a game that was not very story-driven at all, or games that were influential, but not very useful to his argument. For instance, that he spends almost a quarter of the book talking about Farcry and footnotes Shadow of the Colossus and Metal Gear Solid seemed a very odd choice for his arguments that games can tell meaningful stories and have successful game mechanics as well. It's true that you can't include everything in a survey of the video games industry for critics, but I felt as if he'd missed out on some opportunities to discuss games like Metal Gear Solid, that work with many different forms of media for game design inspiration.

Perhaps what took up the space he could've used to discuss some of the games he footnoted, was his sudden switch into autobiography at the tail-end of the book, when he details a cocaine addiction that he suffered while playing GTA and how this epitomized what modern games are like. Not only did I feel as though the rug was pulled from beneath me at this point of the book, I also felt as if this was a book you would not want to give someone who was skeptical about games and gamer culture. I understand Bissell prefaced the book with a statement about how much of the views expressed in the book would be personal, but I felt this last story of his addiction should've been saved for another book that was focusing more on his life being a critic that wrote on games and not for a book where he's trying to prove that games are worth people's time.

I guess the bottom line of this review is, I didn't retain much of my experience of listening to this audiobook. I feel as though I could have looked up gamasutra articles on the creators interviewed in the book and garnered about the same amount of useful information as I did from reading Extra Lives. I'm glad more varied books on games are coming out on the market, but I'm disappointed I couldn't have enjoyed this book (or learned from it) more.

I enjoyed reading this book despite the glaring "literariness" of the writing. Oh right, and the fact that women only enter this book as prostitutes (also "whor*s" -- as in, "Las Vegas was the world's whor*, and whor*s do not change. whor*s collapse.") and irritated girlfriends. Indeed, when it appears that women might actually participate in some way in the gaming world, Bissell cannot comprehend: "I noted the number of attractive young women wandering about the premises [of Ubisoft] and began to wonder if the company had expanded to include an escort service or modeling agency or both."

Now that I have a kid, I don't have time for anything but work and him, and, if I'm lucky, a few hours with my wife after the kid goes to sleep. Most nights, after putting him to bed and making dinner and cleaning up, there's an hour. If I get up early enough, I have an hour to myself in the morning, which I usually use to exercise (Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I don't know. But I'm hedging my bets.).

All of this is to say that I don't play video games anymore. There simply isn't time for everything, and if I want to finish even the meager number of books I need to read for work, something has to go. Video games were what went. I was never much of a gamer anyway. I gravitated towards sports games, for one thing. I had a long, meaningful relationship with the Indianapolis Colts of Madden 98, which I played on an old Nintendo system I had dug out of my parents' basem*nt. I'd get home from work late at night, drink a six-pack of domestic beer, and command my team of pixelated men to victory after victory. These were the nights when I didn't listen to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks over and over again. There were a few years there where I didn't get laid a lot.

Tom Bissell's Extra Lives sort of makes me want to carve out some time for video games. Well, it makes me wish I had the time to carve out. Bissell traces the evolution of games from Resident Evil up through Grand Theft Auto IV, and in the process asks many difficult questions about games and, indeed, art itself. Can a video game have a story that matches the narrative complexity of a great novel? Can it go beyond that? What are the implications of playing a video game in which your character participates in atrocity after atrocity? The days have arrived when we can talk about video games alongside books and films as great works of narrative art. This is the first book, to my knowledge, to do so.

I suspect this book would be even more engaging for someone with a passing knowledge of the games he discusses -- Fall Out, Mass Effect, Bio Shock, Far Cry 2, etc. Bissell's brain is pretty incredible, though, and his sharp, toothy prose (fun words Bissell uses include 'sororus' and 'ludonarrative') and perspective was enough to keep this non-gamer turning the pages. I was enjoying the book until its final chapter, about Grand Theft Auto IV, and Bissell's concurrent decent into cocaine use. That chapter took the book from a great work of criticism to something more, something higher.

Recommended for anyone with an interest in gaming, narrative, art, or criticism.

"Extra Lives: Why Video Games Suck"

At least, that's what this book should be called. Despite the book's title, Tom Bissell spends a painful amount of time waxing obnoxiously verbose (see what I did there?) about how much he hates video games. If I had to estimate, I'd say 80% of his discussion of video games is negative, with weak storytelling and dialogue being his go-to complaints for every shooter he touches.

Note that I said 80% of his discussion of video games, because a sizable chunk of the book has nothing to do with why they matter. Bissell constantly wanders off on self-indulgent treks through his own experiences playing games, including a painfully narcissistic retelling of heroically saving his teammates at the last possible moment in a round of Left 4 Dead. "The people I saved that night still talk about my heroic action- and, yes, it was, it did feel, heroic -whenever we play together," says Bissell, "and, after the round, two of the opposing team's members requested my online friendship, which with great satisfaction I declined." Annoyingly, this is one of the only instances in the book where he praises a game's storytelling, because he was allowed to "write" his own story outside of a determined plot. These tales of gaming add nothing to his supposed "claim" that video games matter; they only recount moments that anyone who's played the game would recognize, while allowing himself to praise his own decisions and "analyze" them by comparing them to other games he's played. He also includes, at the beginning of the second chapter, a massive retelling of the first few minutes of the original Resident Evil. On my e-book copy, this retelling took up 23 of the chapter's 36 pages, with the rest mainly devoted to mocking its terrible dialogue.

Content aside, this book was painful to get through. The author's prose reeks of a thesaurus, and includes such gems as:

"I have already quoted some of the game's dialogue, which at its least weird sounds as though it has been translated out of Japanese, into Swahili, back into Japanese, into the language of the Lunar Federation, back into Japanese, and finally into English."
"Your body has become a hatchery from which spiderlings of dread erupt and skitter."
"I know that the plot provides a stage for the considerable malversation of your erstwhile teammate Wesker."
"Seven years later, Rockstar has spent more time in court than a playground-abutting pesticide manufactory."

Speaking of his choices of words, the author apparently goes out of his way to insult the majority of his potential demographics. "I noted the number of attractive young women wandering about the premises and began to wonder if the company had expanded to include an escort service or modeling agency or both," he says of Ubisoft's office. He also compares Silent Hill's poor voice acting to "autistic miscalculation" in choosing which words to stress in a sentence. I could go on, but these two examples alone should make my point.

Finally, Bissell does a disservice to the medium as a whole by focusing on only two genres of games, one in particular: shooters are clearly his favorite, while platformers limp into second place with a single devoted chapter. Resident Evil, Fallout, Grand Theft Auto, Far Cry, and Mass Effect each have a chapter to themselves, with Left 4 Dead taking a sizable chunk of a supposedly multi-game chapter. Braid is the only non-shooter game to be given significant attention. A single chapter is devoted to an interview with Braid's creator, Jonathan Blow, but focuses more on his views of the gaming industry as a whole than the game itself. Another chapter is named Littlebigproblems, a clear play on the game LittleBigPlanet, but that game is only mentioned at the end of the chapter when Bissell laments how many awards it won. By focusing so singularly on shooters, he excludes the vast majority of the medium, ignoring or only briefly mentioning such genres as puzzle, RPG, strategy, simulation, MMO, adventure, fighting, stealth, music, and casual games. Many of his complaints, especially about supposedly lacking storytelling, figure differently into each genre, and it makes it seem like Bissell cherry-picked the specific games he examined to support his chief complaints.

Overall, this book was terrible. I expected a look at why video games matter. I received an essay on why video games are an artless, time-wasting medium, according to a man who sings nothing but weak complaints and his own praises.

The thing is, if you're going to write a nonfiction book and include some autobiographical elements, like your own experiences playing video games, you've got to face the fact that it can either enrich your narrative, adding a personal voice to the information you're presenting, or it can drive your reader absolutely ballistic because you're being kind of annoying.

Unfortunately, Tom Bissell's Most Favoritest Moments in Video Games falls under the latter category. Rather than answering the question asked in the subtitle of this book, "Why video games matter," he instead takes the reader on an occasionally drug-laced trip through why he likes video games. Along the way he peppers in references to the fact that he's single and can't hold a relationship, he's traveled all over the world, and (totally randomly) he was addicted to cocaine while he played through Grand Theft Auto IV who knows how many times.

That book could have been good, but this book as it is is trying too hard. It's part that, and partartsy-fartsy commentary on video games and how they make us (er, Tom Bissell) think about violence and character and story. It's the latter that I liked the best despite it occasionally being extremely heavy-handed and smug. I don't think Far Cry 2 is some kind of amazingly well-crafted love letter to violence and escapism and man's inhumanity to man, and I don't think the people who made the Grand Theft Auto games are making particularly clever statements when they put a coffee cup in the Statue of Liberty's hand or call Metlife Getalife. He says himself that so many people go into making a game, from the water streaks on a car window to a character's expression to the cutscene dialogue, that you break away from the individual hand of the author in a novel or the coordinated efforts of screenwriter/director/producer/etc. of a movie. I would say it is really very difficult for a game that has dozens of people working on it to come together to create something as artistic as Tom Bissell thinks video games are.

I do love video games. Video games brought me some fond memories: playing rented games on my dad's Xbox, obsessing over the winding plot of Tales of Symphonia with my then-boyfriend in my college dorm, beating Castlevania: Curse of Darkness with my little brother, and more. But I don't think that talking about them the way Tom Bissell does is going to advance them in anyone's mind quite yet. Yes, some people are devoted to games the way they devote themselves to any true artistic measure. The indie games on the PlayStation Network, WiiWare and XBox Live attest to that. But I don't think you can put a game churned out by a big company up on a pedestal. (Except Mass Effect. I'll put Mass Effect right up there with all the love Tom gives it. Even if he played Shepard totally wrong.)

Up there I said the trip through this book is "occasionally drug-laced," but I think that's the wrong choice of words. Drugs are only mentioned in the very last chapter, which is why it seems so random once he starts to wax poetic about cocaine. He tries to tie his journey through Grand Theft Auto IV to his cocaine addiction, and it just falls flat. You cannot yet compare a video game to real life. He just comes across as a total loser in that chapter and it was a really awkward way to end the book.

I'm waiting for a really good book on this topic.

I think I come to this book from a much different direction than a lot of people: I'm not a gamer. Or rather, not any more. My days of gaming ended when I got married and had babies and I never ever got back into that scene in the same way, probably because I just didn't have time, and I enjoyed the human-interactive element of computers too much, chat rooms and discussion boards and the like. Also there's the whole book-reading obsession. I was never going to find the kind of time for games that I have for books.

So there's this whole evolution of gaming that sort of passed me by, and curiosity about what exactly was going on in those games kind of drew me to this book and I wasn't disappointed. The author talks about all the different console games he has obsessed over and spent huge chunks of his life on, and in doing so brings about a very fascinating discussion of the elements of those games and what works and doesn't work. I really enjoyed the whole analysis of "story" and why it is so difficult to incorporate it well into a game, and which games attempt it and fail and which games have broken new ground in that area.

He talks about the killing and the violence in a very matter-of-fact way (which I guess if you've spent days and months killing people in-game you can get pretty matter-of-fact about it.) He pretty much bypasses discussing the Mario's and Donkey Kong games because those are mostly memorization; he discusses titles like Grand Theft Auto, and Left 4 Dead, and other various first person shooter games where you play a character that is more than an entity that hits bricks with their heads to get coins.

There's a lot of discussion about "agency"; the ability of the player to choose what happens next in a storyline as opposed to just "playing through the level" or from the beginning of the story to the end.

I wish I didn't have to read the last part, about where he loses himself inside cocaine addiction for awhile. But in the end it totally makes sense because he admits that gaming, to him, was like cocaine and became inextricably tied up with cocaine, so that now when he replays the games they feel flat and lifeless because he isn't high. The author also talks about his connections to certain game characters, especially Niko in Grand Theft Auto, and that to me was the most fascinating part of the book. He connected less with the heroic, world-saving characters than he did with Niko, a misfit out-of-his-element guy trying to get a leg up and mostly not doing it very well. After all, we can't imagine ourselves saving the world every day, but we sure can relate to making mistakes and haplessly stumbling through life.

in order to clarify to readers what sort of treatment they are in store for, this book deserves a more thematically and stylistically accurate title, perhaps along the lines of, "extra lives: shooters matteringly matter to me."

bissell never approaches a serious discussion of how or on what terms video games are relevant. he does not suggest or explore terms of engagement beyond the fairly common questions, 'how good is the story,' (whatever good is, which he doesn't address), 'how convincing are the characters,' (and he has only one apparent answer to this, which is that sometimes killers should wrestle with their murders) or 'how realistic is the world.' he does not pose leading questions about how and why they matter, an approach may have given structure to the book. he does not treat a useful cross-section of video game types, and he does not even clarify what he means by "matter," except by accident inasmuch as describes over and over the near-chemical (and finally literally chemical) intoxication he experiences every time a game permits the opportunity to digitally dismember someone.

as far as i can tell, bissell's real mission is to drive home how completely he loves a very specific type of video game, how thoroughly he admires these games' creators, and how revolutionary he believes it to be that developers provide as many ways to feel uncomfortable about destruction as they do ways to destroy. in short, it is an inefficient, anecdotal apologetic.

incidentally, this author's prose is ghastly. numerous times i read identical phrases just sentences apart. he turns any word he can get his hands on into an adverb (stoppingly stop it!). his style shifts from wikipedia-style reportage to trade mag ass-kissing to disorienting lyricism.

even in the final chapter i hoped for some sort of hail mary redemption that would bind every subtitular betrayal into some ingenious revelation. instead, bissell catapults into a left field confessional about his (now terminated) cocaine addiction, directly correlates his cocaine addiction to his video game addiction, and finally concludes that video games have only taught him how addictive he is.

well, good for him for kicking one bad habit, but way to undermine the slimmest hope that i could dignify the claim that a video game drug lord, mercenary, or war criminal is relatable just because we 'all do some dumb stuff,' or that any of this matters simply because one can become addicted to feeling how vile vileness feels.

It's a tough sell. The author has to make his book accessible enough for non-gamers, but still interesting enough for gamers of all levels. As a result, this book veers erratically between a genuinely entertaining 'experiential' account of the author's video gaming habits, and a boring, dime-a-dozen primer on video games. For example, the blow-by-blow recounting of the opening minutes of Resident Evil might be interesting to someone who has never played the game before, but as someone who has played that game (and especially that section of that game) more times than he cares to admit, I found that there were very few actual insights in this chapter.

I recently listened to an interview with the author on the Brainy Gamer podcast. The pre-defined audience of this podcast allowed him to go into a lot of detail regarding his thoughts on the relationship between cocaine and GTA IV, and I was left wondering why he couldn't have included these thoughts in the actual book he was promoting? It would have made the book a lot more enjoyable.

In the end, I feel as if the author failed to show us 'why video games matter', but rather told us why video games matter to him - and even then only weakly. For a more engaging and coherent argument on why video games matter, check out Everything Bad is Good for You.

Ya, bad choice of title, really bad. If you pay attention, you'll get the answer at one of the last pages, but majority of book wasn't about title at all. It's more chronology of author's experience with some of the games, philosophical take on each of them, and philosophy of gaming in general. And some of those "takes" are pretty deep, I must say. So if you're gamer, it must be good, right? It is! Just forget the title. If you love videogames and reading about games and someone's gaming passion that's bordeline pathologic just as "real" gamer's or "real" anybody's love for their preferred activity should be, this is book for you. If you can afford distraction of forgotten, organic art of reading and not having 7th pass through GTA IV today, that is.

Damn. I felt sort of dirty after reading this one. Tom Bissell is a really exceptional writer and I loved his work on Disaster Artist. I also love video game commentary. I was completely on board with this title and was hoping for a lot of passion and good storytelling, in a similar vein to the Indie Game movie maybe. Instead I was subjected mostly to a lot of boring prose detailing Bissell's experience playing first person shooter style games that I don't play. Where is the universality? And where is any shred of an argument supporting the stated importance of video games?

The essays are super disjointed, as a result, there is zero flow in the book. The chapters don't seem to have any relationship to one another except that they are all about video games. And for an avid gaming enthusiast Bissell has a surprisingly uncomfortable relationship to his geekery. He spills way too much ink on why video games *don't* actually matter and how ashamed he is of his love for them.

But it was the blatant misogyny that ultimately cemented my dislike for Bissell. In one particularly gross example he wanders into a video game developing company and confronts attractive women milling around. He then wonders if the company has "expanded to include an escort service or modeling agency or both." Ugh. Seriously?

Oh and he also compares Vegas to a spent whor*: "Las Vegas was the world's whor*, and whor*s do not change. whor*s collapse."

Puke.

A lot of readers felt alienated by the chapter on Bissell's cocaine addiction. I actually felt like it was one of the few times in the book where Bissell is in touch with his humanity and has something interesting to say.

I'll admit that I'm not a huge video game player. I play a couple of games on my computer, and played video games a lot as a kid and teenager, but it's been almost 20 years since I played many games and haven't spent much time playing anything since the PlayStation came out. So, if you're really a gamer, you might get more out of this book than I did.

With that said, I saw this author speak and picked up his book at the speaking engagement. He freely admitted that while the subtitle of his book was 'Why Video Games Matter,' one critic had stated that the book more accurately described why video games matter to the author.

In fact, there are a number of reasons that video games are really important. The author alludes to some of them. Video games, especially first-person shooter games, are very popular among members of the military. The video game industry is huge, rivaling other media, like movies. Video games can be used to simulate a lot of different scenarios. Video games are incredibly violent and encourage people to be violent (or don't, I don't know).

Great. So analyze those reasons. Why are video games popular among the military or how do video games help members of the military develop needed skills? (Or how do video games prevent members of the military from developing needed skills, if that's the case.)

What we get instead is a retelling of some of the author's favorite game playing moments. At times, we get a somewhat self-righteous account of why the author decided not to make a particular video game character take unnecessary violent actions since that would have violated the vision of the game developers.

Ultimately, instead of getting an explanation of why video games matter, I think we get a portrait of a life in which too much time was spent wasted playing video games and taking drugs, with one habit seeming to fuel the other. The author seems to have been frequently more concerned with whether his female video game characters would consummate their relationships than whether he would consummate his own. By the end, I was a bit depressed and actually felt like I disliked the author.

To review Tom Bissell's latest work, it seems one must start off with a little personal background, so as not to be dismissed out-of-hand as an outsider. Here, I can readily admit to my great fondness of games and all things gamey and thereby actually hope to increase (for once in life) your estimation of my worth as a book reviewer. To be more specific though, Bissell's 'research' does cover an awful lot of first-person shooter games, which he lumps together with many action/adventure games as being about "narrative stories". I personally have never gotten too excited about first-person shooters, but I do love a good story woven into my game.

At the outset of Extra Lives, it was apparent that the differences in my personal taste in games would not matter and that Bissell's own skill with narrative could transcend the fact that we will likely never cross paths in an online game forum. The first few chapters of the work were excellently written: though I have never played Fallout 3 or Resident Evil, and have only fleeting acquaintance with Left for Dead, I was still transported and engaged. I shared Bissell's frustration with the often teeth-grindingly-terrible dialog in games and was breathlessly beside him as he tiptoed his way past hordes of zombie minions in Left for Dead. I found myself openly laughing at Bissell's wit and excited about his apparent insights into gaming. Even while discussing fairly specific experiences, Bissell was speaking to the heart of gaming in general.

Bissell has clearly thought deeply about gaming; how it could be improved and how impactful it already is on even the casual gamer. He repeatedly discusses his ideas on how gaming should be improved and how it can be elevated as an art form. He makes the argument that games, rather uniquely as an art form, can achieve a level of interactivity that places the gamer in situations they would never encounter in life. The engagement of the gamer can involve them much more deeply than observing a fixed story like those in books/film, and can challenge them to make ethical decisions that are personally meaningful. With such a strong base, I was hooked and excited to hear what Bissell had to say on this matter.

Unfortunately, as I progressed past the first third of the book, it seemed as though Bissell lost his way. I found myself unexpectedly slogging through obscure details about the way that a controller handled in this game, or how annoying the inventory/encumbrance system(s) were in that game. In an odd parallel to 'game rage' I found myself periodically becoming actively angry with Bissell throughout the second half of the book, even exclaiming aloud in disbelief/annoyance. Frequently, the text was so specific that it left me imagining Bissell giving a shrug of the shoulders and saying “guess you had to be there” in the way that one does after delivering a terrible anecdote. A good portion of the middle section of this book seemed more appropriate for a magazine game review and was just plain frustrating to anyone who has not specifically played the game in question.

I soldiered on anyway, kept from total madness by the occasional interviews that Bissell had with various game designers – all of which were excellent and revealing. Armed with more information than I cared to know on the realistic pleas for mercy programmed into the computer characters within Far Cry 2, I approached the final chapter – wherein Bissell discusses his addiction to cocaine and (we are assured) completely unrelated addition to Grand Theft Auto IV. Yet, even here, in a deeply personal period of Bissell’s life, the narrative was flat and uninvolving. All of the formidable powers of insight that Bissell displays in dissecting the minute flaws of story or gameplay vanish when he turns his gaze upon his own life.

The central problem of this book became apparent to me only once it was finished: Tom Bissell is far too personally involved with the games and gamer culture that he is reporting upon. In his book Bissell approaches the edge of the most important and interesting questions facing the gaming industry and any self-aware gamer. Having brought the reader to this vantage point, Bissell merely dances distractingly in place for hundreds of pages.

I agree with Bissell that it would be great to elevate the art of game design – making games more insightful, impactful and involving. But the next obvious discussion following this is one of content. Bissell appears to yearn for even better “sandbox-style” games where the environment is even more interactive and the player is free to do whatever they want. Yet what does it mean that when Bissell (and many other gamers) are free to pursue these impulses, they are mostly destructive? Why, among the dozens of blockbuster games that Bissell highlighted, were almost all of them exceptionally violent? In a discussion of the meaning of games, why was there only fleeting reference to scientific studies suggesting games impact the user in significant ways?

For example, Bissell spends a great deal of time discussing his disappointment that “politics” seem to have prevented Ubisoft from including innocent civilians in the world of Far Cry 2 – as inclusion of these citizens would force the player to confront some thorny ethical dilemmas. Yet, in the very next chapter, Bissell gleefully recounts his in-game actions upon the citizens programmed in Grand Theft Auto IV; namely, finding thousands of clever and gruesome ways to massacre them. He then hollowly reassures us that “the really violent stuff that I did I did in games … I did not save so as to preserve my character’s moral integrity.”

Statements like this and the entire weirdly disconnected treatment that Bissell gives in his final chapter on drugs and GTA IV reveal an author this is deeply conflicted about games. I think many serious gamers (myself included) are conflicted in a similar manner; amazed at the power and imagination of games – yet a little frightened of the emotional sway those games can hold over them. It would be presumptuous of me to assume that one could (or should) try to dictate the exact content of an entire art form - and to be clear, I’m not attempting to make any direct connection between Grand Theft Auto specifically and violence/drug use/whatever. But surely in a book about the meaningfulness of games, a discussion on the broader impact of game content on their users is relevant?

Bissell is clearly an intelligent and (usually) insightful guy. He speaks of what a powerful force gaming can be, what an influential force it has been in his life, then speaks of how he dreams of a future where such games are even more inspiring and engrossing. Given his significant personal experience wrestling with the darker side of games in his life, the absence of any substantial discussion on the ethics surrounding game design is particularly glaring. I am personally convinced he has many thoughts on this issue and many thoughts on the impact video games have had specifically on his personality/lifestyle. Unfortunately, he cowardly lets himself, and the entire gaming industry, off very lightly in this book.

Here's the whole of my experience with video games: when I was growing up in the '90s and almost every other kid I knew was getting a Nintendo or a Sega or a PlayStation, my parents bought me a console called Socrates. Socrates was a robot who looked kind of like the one from Short Circuit, and all of the (preloaded, unexpandable) games in his system were designed to teach you about math and spelling and other such crunchy, educational things. This was the only gaming system I was ever allowed to have—just like Reader Rabbit was the first, and for a long time the only, computer game permitted me.

Which is not to say I was omg horribly deprived or anything. Just: I never developed an interest in video games, and I still don't have one—the only modern game I think I've played is Rock Band, and when I play that at parties I always try to position myself as the singer because I lack the hand-eye coordination to succeed at any of the instruments. That's the price of a childhood without video games, right there. I can, however, shout my way through a mean “Ballroom Blitz.” (“All right, fellas, let's goooooooooo!”)

So: my interest in video games = nil. Nevertheless, I was enthralled by Bissell's treatise on their cultural importance. Like an extended version of Chuck Klosterman's fabulous essay on Saved By the Bell (which I also wasn't allowed to watch—no cartoons, either) from Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Bissell combines examples of what video games have meant to him with an exploration of what larger significance they have or might one day hope to achieve. I may have even been at an advantage, having no idea what Bissell was talking about: I've seen some other reviewers complain that, for example, the long section where he takes the reader step-by-step, moment-by-moment through the opening of the first Resident Evil game is too much of a rehash if you've played it. I haven't, and therefore I found it fascinating to experience this paradigm-shifting game along with Bissell's younger self.

Reading Extra Lives didn't make me want to rush out and buy a [insert name of cool new video game console here:], just like that essay in Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs didn't make me want to track down old episodes of Saved By the Bell. (And thank god. Do I really need more ways to waste time? No. I have the internet, thanks.) But I always love thoughtful explorations of how/why dumb stuff can matter to people. I know this sounds like circular logic, but: the stuff that matters matters. I can has my sociology degree nao?

Speaking of dumb stuff that matters to me: I had one of the best book/music fusion experiences while reading this. My copy came in at the library the same day I got the new Arcade Fire album, The Suburbs, and the two go beautifully together, both evoking this sense of isolation among sprawl and summoning up images of post-apocalyptic landscapes. (A theme in many video games—maybe I am missing out?) “Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains”—yum. I haven't had two disparate works work so well together since the Christmas I was given both Neil Gaiman's Stardust and Sarah McLachlan's Touch. You just try reading that book and listening to the song “Vox”—it's better than The Wizard of Oz coupled with Dark Side of the Moon, I swear.

This book should really be renamed to "Extra Lives: Why I Like Video Games," because most of it is about the five or six games that Bissell really loves - the rest is about the other best-selling award-winning games he doesn't like because... well, because there weren't enough zombies or weren't set in some sort of post-apocalyptic or didn't stir up enough controversy in the real world.

I settled on two stars as a happy medium. I really wanted to give it three stars because the gaming industry is essentially a land mine. Say the wrong thing (or have the wrong opinions) and your critics and the trolls will be on you faster than a speeding bullet, and it's possible my opinions here are a case in point. Certain passages are described perfectly and with such attention to detail I knew exactly what he was talking about. Bissell's descriptions of Left 4 Dead, for example, were spot on; he flawlessly captured the intensity and the rush of adrenaline when you hear the ominous sound that signals a horde is approaching. Likewise, his retelling of the opening sequence of Resident Evil 2 strikes as much fear and anxiety as an actual playthrough. In those limited cases, Bissell is a magician and he deserves three stars.

On the other hand, Bissell had his chance at a soapbox, and this is mine. You can't claim to be a champion of games or claim to be spearheading the movement to validate games as art by brushing off historic, iconic games that have been universally accepted as some of the best games ever, period.

Bissell likes to praise games that come with great story, but he skims over Ocarina of Time as something that lacks "imagination" and despite being over forty hours long in a complete playthrough, it is "somehow too small." Little Bit Planet, a game designed by creatives for creatives is just another platformer to Bissell, but that's besides the point; LBP is about providing the tools for creating worlds and universes with limitless possibilities. Anything from racecars to shooters are possible, but Bissell doesn't care for that unless he's racing against police in GTA or shooting zombies.

The latter half of the book is focused on games that really don't have an ending. Games like Mass Effect and Fry Cry and Grand Theft Auto, although they do have an ending in the script, rarely see players actually reaching any level of completion. In addition to zombies and monsters, Bissell has a great fondness for games that let him wander around aimlessly to do whatever he wants. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with liking the open world genre of games. But when he comes out and says "OPEN WORLD GAMES A+++" and then turns around to say "World of Warcraft?? Blegh!" not because of the game mechanics or the community but just because, then there's no reason for me to take any of it seriously at all.

I have no doubt Bissell has played his fair share of games, and in the end this isn't a one star review because in the end this is just an opinion piece, and I can't fault him (too much) for having an opinion. I agree with a few of his points, but just the ones where he praises the games he likes. The times when he only briefly mentions a legendary game and tosses it aside as "not good enough," I can't agree. Two stars, maybe one. Game over!

This was a fun read. Its like the conversations you have with your friends. You'll find yourself say 'Oh yeah! I remember that!" often. He talks about the more common games that we gamers play so its easy to relate. Any games that he talks about that you haven't played makes you want to! We ended up going out and buying Fallout 3 right afterward. It was really refreshing to hear someone appreciate the world of games, the place they take you. The only negative thing I have to say is that it gets a little repetitive; describing every game 'beautiful and amazing'.

I read Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter and Pippin Barr’s How to Play a Video Game in one long binge over Waitangi weekend. I realised at the end of the weekend that I had read the books in what would seem to be the wrong order - Bissell’s longer memoir first, Barr’s slim primer second - but I think this accident brought more depth to both.

Let’s start with autobiography. Barr uses autobiography as a framing device, taking us through his near life-long history of gaming, from playing Aztec as a four-year-old on the family’s new Apple IIe to his job now in Copenhagen, 28 years later, teaching video game design in a university. The journey wends past games arcades, rented Sega Mega Drives, teaching his uncle to play Red Dead Redemption, and Barr’s moment of internet splendour last year, when his own game The Artist is Present broke out of the niche of indie game forums and hit the online pages of publications as diverse as HuffPo and The Arts Newspaper.

Barr tells us the personal narrative of his history with his subject matter; this is a hallmark of Awa Press’s Ginger Series, of which How to Play a Video Game is the 12th release. Ginger Series authors give us an entry into a world they enjoy, even adore, through sharing the story of their own romantic relationship with it. Bissell takes this autobiographical approach much further. His book criss-crosses between reportage, travelogue, love letter, and excoriating self confession, especially when it comes to his several years spent not writing (he was the author of several books of fiction and a regular columnist for a number of magazines), playing games in marathon-like sessions, and throwing cocaine up his nose:

Soon I was sleeping in my clothes. Soon my hair was stiff and fragrantly unclean. Soon I was doing lines before my Estonian class, staying up for days, curating prodigious nose bleeds and spontaneously vomiting from exhaustion. Soon my pillowcases bore rusty coins of nasal drippage. Soon the only thing I could smell was something like the inside of an empty bottle of prescription medicine. Soon my biweekly phone call to my cocaine dealer was a weekly phone call. Soon I was walking into the night, handing hundreds of dollars in cash to a Russian man whose name I did not even know, waiting in alleys for him to come back – which he always did, though I never fully expected him to – and retreating home, to my Xbox, to GTA IV, to the electrifying solitude of my mind at play in an anarchic digital world.
...
Video games and cocaine feed on my impulsiveness, reinforce my love of solitude and make me feel good and bad in equal measure. The crucial difference is that I believe in what video games want to give me, while the bequest of cocaine is one I loathe. I do know that video games have enriched my life. Of that I have no doubt. They have also done damage to my life. Of that I have no doubt. I let this happen, of course; I even helped the process along. As for cocaine, it has been a long time since I last did it, but not as long as I would like.

So Barr’s story is a beginner’s guide that shares his own beginnings; Bissell’s a classic bildungsroman. Both writers verge into being obsessive players, regularly logging 80+ hours on a game (‘I can think of only one other personal activity I would be less eager to see audited in this way’, writes Bissell, ‘and it, too, is a single-player experience’). Bissell seems more performance and personality focused (his interviews with figures in the game design world are a strength of the book that prevent it from becoming me-me-me-ish), Barr somewhat more philosophical and reflective.

There are many points where I could do a compare and contrast, or just write a list of 200 Things I Learned Reading These Books (I need to declare at this point that I am a hopeless non-gamer, and that everything here was new to me, from William Higinbotham, to the use of ‘training sessions’ at the start of a game to teach you the controls, to the beauty of Flower). But the thing that really interested me, and the thing that I really want to explore here, was each writers’ underlying concern in their book.

For Bissell, the writer, this concern is storytelling, and how video games are still weighted towards game play rather than narrative:

This is one of the most suspect things about the game form. … A game with an involving story and poor gameplay cannot be considered a successful game, whereas a game with superb gameplay and a laughable story can see its spine bend from the weight of many accolades—and those who praise the latter game will not be wrong.

Early in the book, Bissell reflects on a piece of juvenilia, an essay for an anthology of “young writing”, where he wrote about ‘video games and whether they were a distraction from the calling of literature’. Then he questioned where video games land on ‘art’s fairly forgiving sliding scale’; today, he says, with video games the youngest and increasingly dominant form of popular art, such questions are redundant.

However, he continues, in that essay he was trying to talk about the intelligence that distinguishes art works from everything else. Intelligence, he says, can be expressed in all sorts of way; morally, formally, technically, stylistically, thematically, emotionally. Masterpieces - the things we identify as wiping the table with their intelligence - are comprehensively intelligent; intelligent in all sorts of ways. And they are generally the result of one unified vision, one single game. Video games, he notes, are usually the products of many minds: many games ‘have more formal and stylistic intelligence than they know what to do with and not even trace amounts of thematic, emotional or moral intelligence.’

Can game play and narrative ever be happily melded? Bissell is unsure:

A noisy group of video-game critics and theoreticians laments the rise of story in games. Games, in one version of this view, are best exemplified as total play, wherein the player is an immaterial demiurge and the only ‘narrative’ is what anecdotally generated during play. (Tetris would be the best example of this sort of game.) My suspicion is that this lament comes less from frustration with story qua story than it does from the narrative butterfingers on outstanding display in the vast majority of contemporary video games. I share that frustration. I also love being the agent of chaos in the video game world. What I want from games - a control as certain and seamless as the means by which I am being controlled - may be impossible, and I am back to where I began.

Bissell also observes that video games are different from other art forms in one very exact way: the player is just that - not a viewer or reader, but an active, decision-making participant. Bissell casts around extensively on the potential conflict between narrative and gameplay and, by extension, between the player’s agency and surrender. ‘You get controlled and are controlled��, he notes: the balance is more equal than most forms of art, but the fact that you get to shape the story to any extent reminds you that ‘a presiding intelligence exists within the game along with you, and it is this sensation that invites the otherwise unworkable comparisons between games and other forms of art.’

For Barr, this is less a conundrum than a fruitful tension. His special interest - as a gamer, an academic, and increasingly the game creator - it is playing against the grain, exploring what the world offers, how far you can probe it. What happens if you walk away from your mission and instead decide to drive your car into a lake or watch a rabbit hop around your horse?

In one chapter, Barr describes going off the rails in Grand Theft Auto IV:

When the game demands you ‘drive to the second diamond pickup’, go rogue: veer the truck away from this destination and start calling the shots yourself. Drive for a while, and listen to a jazz station on the radio as you search for something new to do.

Eventually you find yourself in the game’s version of Central Park. You carefully drive the lage garbage truck down leafy pathways, swerving to avoid pedestrians. Looking for an amusing diversion, you drive into a lake and somehow manage to keep going with half the vehicle submerged. The music becomes muted by the water, lending a muffled soundtrack to the already strange scene. You drive like this for a while, tooting the horn at people walking next to the water. They stop and star at the incongruous sight of a garbage truck driving in a lake in Central Park.

I’m pretty underwater jazz wasn’t what the morality police were thinking of when they condemned Grand Theft Auto IV in one of those regular Think of the Children pieces about video games. And a following paragraph gives an interesting spin on Bissell’s worries about control:

So, there are two very different ways to approach a video game. You can perform - focusing on trying to do the right thing, succeeding, and ultimately winning on the game’s terms. Or you can play - doing what you want to do, not what you ‘should’ do. The idea that we can decide how we feel like relating to a video game is important, even revolutionary. It means we are playing the game, not the other way around.

Gaming the game doesn’t necessarily mean gaming the game’s maker, however. Instead, it’s more like picking up the ball they’ve just tossed you:

... it’s not just that you can do these things, the game’s creator wants you to. Playing a game can be seen as a kind of conversation with its designer. Each time you try something … it’s like asking the designer a question: ‘What if I do this?”. Their answer comes in the way the game responds to your actions.

This was the point that really fired my imagination in the two books - and brought me circling back to the frustration Bissell feels. No matter how many diversions you take or daft things you attempt, you’re still playing inside a circ*mscribed world, one where every pixel is controlled by rules someone else put in place.

The one exception might be the kinds of game that Barr clearly loves: simulations like The Sims, and the collaborative world-building game MInecraft. It is the potential for collaborative play that really seems to thrill him:

A big part of the excitement of playing a game with someone else is sharing a world with them. Even the simple act of handing an object to a friend in Minecraft invests the experience with a strong sense that you’re both really there. Some of the most magical experiences I have had in a video game happened when a friend and I walked together through the world of Minecraft, commenting on each spectacular rock formation we saw, and decorating entire landscapes with torch patterns just so that we could stand together at a vantage point and admire the beauty of what we’d made.

But it’s not just the happy happy joy joy game worlds where this feeling is evoked:

Video games creators have lately been catching on to the idea that we might not always want to engage in mortal combat against our friends and families, but play together instead. Often this means teaming up to engage in mortal combat against others. In Left 4 Dead, a zombie-based game, four players join forces to try and survive in various zombie-infested locations. While battling zombies is entertaining on its own, having a friend rush to your side to dislodge a zombie and then give you medical aid can really get the adrenaline pumping …

… There are few gaming experiences more immediately stunning than seeing another person run past you in the same virtual world. The realisation that various moving figures around you are, in reality, all people who are playing the same game, following the same rules, and sharing many of the same objectives as you is a paradigm shift. [These virtual worlds] take on a greater significance because you are literally in it together.

With more space and a different remit, but to the same conclusion, Bissell also discusses Left 4 Dead. He recounts one game in which he had to choose between personal ‘safety’, and going back out to rescue his three teammates, against seemingly impossible odds:

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. …

The people I saved that night still talk about my heroic action - and yes, it was, it did feel, heroic - whenever we play together … All 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?

I want to bring in a quote now from a recent post on Barr’s blog. It was through Barr’s blog that I began to develop a curiosity about video games - their making, their playing, their legends, their philosophies. Barr’s blog is more sophisticated, more revealing, more humourous than his book - perhaps because it is written for that marvellous thing, the half-imagined, half-obscured audience of people who are just like the author.

In this post, Barr comes back to this point he and Bissell have been circling, this magical opportunity. Reviewing an article by another writer on the four types of video game tragedy, he concludes:

we could suggest that much of the tragic isn’t about making choices but rather about the inability to make them. Perhaps one of the challenges for tragedy in video games is to jettison the notion that the player should always be the explicit author of their circ*mstances but instead as merely one part in a larger world which is not always impressed or even affected by their actions.

Beyond this, however, I think it’s simply true that we, as players, need to get our sh*t together a bit and attempt to engage with the drama of the games we play. If it’s really true that we’re incapable of choosing a tragic ending, then to my mind that suggests a degree of apathy and weakness of spirit on our part and we ought to train ourselves to be stronger participants. It would help, of course, if games themselves respected us more in this same way, but it’s clearly a shared problem, not the pure responsibility of game makers.

My overall impressions? Barr’s book is (by design, I believe) more simplistic than his wonderful and self-effacing blog; I think he has a deeper and stranger book hovering in his near future. Bissell’s book is a little baggy-seated, and occasionally repetitive, but also very entertaining. But both have opened my eyes, not just to the rich, deep, wide, silly, expensive, violent, harrowing and pluripotent world of video games, but also to the conversations that go on within it.

Dlouho jsem nedokázal pochopit, co vlastně kritik Bissell píše. Reportážní části střídají introspekce, cestopis střídá rozhovory, fetování střídá hraní. Nakonec mi došlo, že se Bissell hádá sám se sebou, jestli jsou videohry umění nebo ne. Jestli ano, tak proč jsou tak hloupoučké, a když ne, tak proč tolik lidí chce, aby uměním byly?

Bissell, mám pocit, neodpovídá, ale poutavě píše, jak mu videohry pomáhaly v těžkých životních chvílích a co pro něj znamenalo „vyrůstat s hrami“. Snad i proto hledá tu odpověď, aby neměl pocit, že promarnil nějakou část života. A při hledání jde až do kanceláří autorů her a ptá se jich, často dost přímočaře: Vo co vám jde?

A to jsou momenty, které jsou pro mě nezajímavější. Bissell sedí s Cliffem Blezsinskim nad Gears of War, s Drewem Karpyshynem nad Mass Effect, s Jonathanem Blowem nad Braid anebo s Clintem Hockingem nad Far Cry 2, mluví s Peterem Molyneuxem o Fable a pitvá Grand Theft Auto po několika lajnách koksu. A ptá se: vo co vám jde? A oni, nepřipraveni na takovou upřímnost, odpovídají. Tyhle části jsou v celé "zpovědi jednoho hráče" hrozně důležité a intimní - odhalují poměrně dost, jak zpovídaní vidí svět a hry. Nebudu spoilerovat, ale řeknu vám, že na Gears of War se po přečtení téhle knihy (nebo spíš odposlouchání, protože zapomenutý předplatný Audible, tralala) dívám dost jinak.

Jde jen o hry, které má Bissell rád, což celkem jasně přiznává, když v úvodu říká, že nebude řešit PC scénu a zaměří se na konzole. V tom je kniha vlastně dost povrchní, ale zároveň osobní a osobitá: Bissell pitvá hry, které se jemu líbí a nesnaží se přijít s nějakým třeskutě originálním náhledem na věc. Vlastně je to bildungsroman, Bissell prochází hledáním herní a vlastní identity, upozorňuje na společenské postavení, do kterého ho hry dostaly a svým způsobem ztrácí hraním nevinnost, protože se na spoustu věcí nedokáže podívat stejně, jako před tím (v tomhle směru je fantastický dodatkový rozhovor s Molyneuxem o Fable). A celé je to vyprávěním o cestě a na cestě.

Jak budete vnímat tuhle knihu, to záleží na tom, co očekáváte. Jestli jasnou odpověď na otázku, proč na videohrách záleží (jak zní podtitul), tak jděte někam jinam. Tohle je moc rozevláté, nespecifické, subjektivní. Jestli povídání o životě s hrami, se kterým nemusíte souhlasit, ale které mnohé o hrách odhalí, tak jste tu správně. A já si mnohokrát připadal, jako že sedím s dobrým známým na kafi, povídáme si o hrách, naladěni na stejnou vlnu a občas ke stolu přisedne někdo, kdo přihodí pár mouder a rozpozrů a zase odejde. A bylo to fajn. Za to ta kniha stojí.

I added this book to my shelf for the two oxymorons built into the existence of this book. The first is the juxtaposition of genres: a book...about video games?! I suppose the Venn diagram of bookworms and video game addicts could have some sort of intersection, and the presence of the author writing this book indicates there are indeed some out there. The second is built into the title: Why Video Games Matter. My instantaneous and perhaps self-righteous answer is: they don't. I never got into console games, but I did have a 5+ year addiction to the MMORPG Runescape-- and while I look on those lost years very fondly, I don't consider them to be of any inherent value. There are two main reasons my I personally don't think video games can justify their existence. First is that they are an addictive time sink, with the corollary that the lost time takes away from not only more productive hobbies, but also things necessary for existence like an income to provide for yourself and healthy relationships. The second is that many (OK, not all, but quite a darn few including the entire genre of FPS games) video games are extremely violent, and they treat violence very casually. Just reading paragraph after paragraph in this book shows you how casually murder is treated in these things, and the author admitting multiple times that, well, you just kind of don't feel anything:

At one point in Far Cry 2, I was running along the savanna when I was spotted by two militiamen. I turned and shot, and, I thought, killed them both. When I waded into the waist-deep grass to pick up their ammo, it transpired that one of the men was still alive. He proceed to plug me with his sidearm. Frantic, and low on health, I looked around, trying to find the groaning, dying man, but the grass was too dense. I sprinted away, only to be hit by a few more of his potshots. When I had put enough distance between us, I lobbed a Molotov co*cktail into the general area where the supine, dying man lay. Within seconds, I could hear him screaming amid the twiggly crackly of the grass catching fire. Sitting before my television, I felt a kind of horridly unreciprocated intimacy with the man I had just burned to death.

If the video game references were taken out of this passage and you didn't know the context, this would be horrible. But because it's a video game... well, it doesn't matter right? It's just flashes of pixelated light.

A third critique of video games that I thought of while reading the book was given in an article by Mormon apostle David A. Bednar that I find philosophically interesting, even if it isn't the first reason that might come to your mind. Let me share a passage:

Sadly, some young men and young women in the Church today ignore “things as they really are” and neglect eternal relationships for digital distractions, diversions, and detours that have no lasting value. My heart aches when a young couple—sealed together in the house of the Lord for time and for all eternity by the power of the holy priesthood—experiences marital difficulties because of the addicting effect of excessive video gaming or online socializing. A young man or woman may waste countless hours, postpone or forfeit vocational or academic achievement, and ultimately sacrifice cherished human relationships because of mind- and spirit-numbing video and online games. As the Lord declared, “Wherefore, I give unto them a commandment … : Thou shalt not idle away thy time, neither shalt thou bury thy talent that it may not be known” (D&C 60:13).

You may now be asking yourself, “But, Brother Bednar, you began today by talking about the importance of a physical body in our eternal progression. Are you suggesting that video gaming and various types of computer-mediated communication can play a role in minimizing the importance of our physical bodies?” That is precisely what I am declaring. Let me explain.

We live at a time when technology can be used to replicate reality, to augment reality, and to create virtual reality. For example, a medical doctor can use software simulation to gain valuable experience performing a complicated surgical operation without ever putting a human patient at risk... However, a simulation or model can lead to spiritual impairment and danger if the fidelity is high and the purposes are bad—such as experimenting with actions contrary to God’s commandments or enticing us to think or do things we would not otherwise think or do “because it is only a game.”

I chose to move this book to the top of my reading list after a conversation with a friend on a hike this past weekend. I'm pretty open about talking about my faith with other people, and I get quite a few curious inquiries. This friend asked, "What do Mormons think of video games?" I explained that there is no commandment, persay, banning video games. But Church leaders have given pretty stark warnings about video games, and many Mormon families are wary of them. My family, for instance, had a no-video-game policy for our entire childhood, and we would only get to play them at friend's houses where the long arm of parental rules couldn't reach. I myself made it to adulthood feeling the better for it, and am glad I escaped childhood relatively unscathed.

Funny enough though, this book doesn't purport to be an exercise in video game apologetics. It doesn't provide a cohesive argument, and even readily admits the dark side of video games. Tom Bissell gives a disclaimer at the beginning that the book rather seeks to express "one man's opinions and thoughts on what playing games feels like, why he plays them, and the questions they make him think about." This provides an interesting mix of game play-by-play, a bit of philosophy, the role of narrative, and even some (literary?) criticism. Some of my favorite passages include this explanation of why the best games are the ones that don't try to explain too much:

For many gamers (and by all evidence, game designers), story is largely a matter of accumulation. The more explanation there is, the thought appears to go, the more story has to be generated. This would be a profound misunderstanding of story for any form of narrative art, but it has hobbled the otherwise high creative achievement of any number of games. Frequently in works with any degree of genre loyalty-- this would include a vast majority of video games-- the more explicit the story becomes, the more silly it suddenly will seem. (Let us call this the Midi-chlorian Error). The best science fiction is usually densely realistic in quotidian detail but evocatively vague about the bigger questions. Tolkien is all but ruined for me whenever I make the mistake of perusing the Anglo-Saxon Talmudisms of his various appendices: "Among the Eldar the Alphabet of Daeron did not develop true cursive forms"-- kill me, please now-- "since for writing the Elves adopted the Faenorian letters."... The impulse to explain is the Achilles' heel of all genre work, and the most sophisticated artists within every genre know better than to expose their worlds to the sharp knife of intellection.

the comparison of modern-day games with their older counterparts:

A game like Gears of War differs so profoundly from Super Mario Bros. that the two appear to share as many commonalities as a trilobite does with a Great Dane. Super Mario requires an ability to recognize patterns, considerable hand-eye coordination, and quick reflexes. Gears requires the ability to think tactically and make subtle judgments based on scant information, a constant awareness of multiple variables (ammunition stores, enemy weaknesses) as they change throughout the game, and the spatial sensitivity to control one's movement through a space in which the "right" direction is not always apparent. Anyone who plays modern games such as Gears does not so much learn the rules as develop a kind of intuition for how the game operates. Often, there is no single way to accomplish a given task; improvisation is rewarded. Older games, like Super Mario, punish improvisation; You live or die according to their algebra alone.

and the "literary" device of mechanics within games:

For any artist who sails beneath the Jolly Roger of genre, this is an alien way to work. As someone who attempts to write what is politely known as literary fiction, I am confident in this assertion. For me, stories break the surface in the form of image or character or situation. I start with the variables, not the system. This is intended neither to ennoble my way of working nor denigrate the game designer; it is to acknowledge the very different formal constraints game designers have to struggle with. While I may wonder if a certain story idea will "work", this would be a differently approached and much, much less subjective question if I were a game designer. A game that does not work will, literally, not function. (There is, it should be said, another side to the game-designer mind-set: No matter how famous or well known, most designers are happy to talk about how their games failed in certain areas, and they will even explain why. Not in my life have I encountered a writer with a blood-alcohol content below .2 willing to make a similar admission.)

There were some detracting elements, including his pretty foul mouth and a few jabs at religious folk I found in poor taste. And while I enjoyed quite a bit of the book, the last chapter kind of ruined it. It's literally a play by play of him doing nothing but playing video games while getting high on weed and cocaine. Any aesthetic appreciation for the genre of video games kind of left at that point. Listen to this summary by the author of pretty much why both video games and cocaine are bad for you-- and also a kind of existential crisis:

Video games and cocaine feed on my impulsiveness, reinforce my love of solitude, and make me feel good and bad in equal measure. The crucial difference is that I believe in what video games want to give me, while the bequest of cocaine is one I loathe and distrust... For every moment of transcendence there is a moment in the gutter. For all its emotional violence there are long periods of quiet and calm. Something bombardingly strange or new is always happening. You constantly find things, constantly learn things, constantly see things you could not have imagined. When you are away from it, you long for its dark and narrow energies. But am I talking about video games or cocaine?...

So what have games given me? Experiences. Not surrogate experiences, but actual experiences, many of which are as important to me as any real memories. Once I wanted games to show me things I could not see in any other medium. Then I wanted games to tell me a story in a way no other medium can. Then I wanted games to redeem something absent in myself. Then I wanted a game experience that points not toward something, but at something. Playing GTA IV on co*ke for weeks and then months at a time, I learned that maybe all a game can do is point at the person who is playing it, and maybe this has to be enough.

There is some absolutely beautiful prose here. Bissell is very gifted, and this book is worth reading whether you like video games or despise them. If anything, it at least helped me appreciate the appeal that video games have for some people.

Tom Bissell tem escrito sobre videojogos para publicações como Slate, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Reviews, em 2010 após recuperar de um período de três anos em que viveu dependente de drogas e videojogos resolveu escrever um livro e expor a sua dependência, mas sem contudo deixar de separar os videojogos das drogas. Esta componente da sua história surge apenas no último capítulo, o que permite ao livro libertar-se e dedicar-se quase completamente à discussão sobre os videojogos, focando-se sobre alguns dos mais representativos exemplos da última década - Fallout 3, Mass Effect, Far Cry II, Braid, LittleBigPlanet, GTA IV, Fable II, etc.

O livro é escrito num tom jornalístico e por isso não esperava aprofundamentos tanto no campo tecnológico, como design ou estético. Bissell desenvolve um conjunto de pequenas histórias bem contadas à volta da sua experiência com cada um destes videojogos, que nos vão permitir ganhar uma noção daquilo que tratam e como tratam estes jogos. São textos que refletem experiências, sentimentos e reflexões, à volta do tempo de contacto com cada uma das obras, que permitem a quem nunca jogou aceder ao limiar da compreensão do que envolvem. Por outro lado para quem os jogou, funcionam como uma espécie de relato pejado de alguma nostalgia, de “vidas” vividas, as tais “vidas extra” que nos permitem por vezes refletir sobre o poder real destes videojogos sobre nós.

Como disse a reflexão não é profunda, contudo podemos encontrar muitos momentos relevantes para quem estuda o meio, nomeadamente no belíssimo conjunto de entrevistas realizadas com os criadores de cada um destes jogos, uma das quais surge no final do livro com um dos mais amados, assim como odiado, o designer Peter Molyneux. Habituados às suas grandiloquências e megalomanias, não pude no entanto deixar de me emocionar e deixar levar no fluxo das suas palavras que ditam o propósito de quem trabalha nesta área, indústria ou academia, definindo-se num parágrafo o porquê de todo o sucesso desta área cultural a nível mundial (ler abaixo).

A ideia do videojogo querer chegar a ser real, não se joga apenas nos gráficos, mas em tudo, desde logo na inteligência artificial, na capacidade para recriar no interior de máquinas, cópias exactas de nós mesmos. Este é o desígnio da arte de representação desde sempre, e cada arte tem usado o seu melhor para daí se aproximar, veremos onde chegarão os videojogos, porque tudo se motiva por sonhos, são eles que mantêm vivas a discussão e a criação, fazendo dos videojogos uma das indústrias mais relevantes da atualidade.

“If I were to draw on the wall what a computer-game character was just twenty years ago it would be made up of sixteen-by-sixteen dots, and that’s it. We’ve gone from that to daring to suggest we can represent the human face.
And pretty much everything we’ve done, we’ve invented. There wasn’t this technology pool that we pulled it out of. Ten, fifteen years ago, you couldn’t walk into a bookshop and learn how to do it. There weren’t any books on this stuff. They did not exist.
Painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? No. We had to invent architecture first. We had to quarry the stones. We had to invent the paint. That really is amazing. Think of word processors and spreadsheets and operating systems—they’re all kind of the same as they were fifteen years ago. There is not another form of technology on this planet that has kept up with games.
The game industry marches on in the way it does because it has this dream that, one day, it’s going to be real. We’re going to have real life. We’re going to have real characters. We’re going to have real drama. We’re going to change the world and entertain in a way that nothing else ever has before.” Peter Molyneux em excerto de “Extra Lives” (2010) de Tom Bissell

Também em: http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/2...

Vice City

Perhaps that is what your world becomes on the crack-cocaine that is video gaming. Tom Bissell figuratively (and literally) knows this is true. He presents a self-deprecating, semi-autobiographical history of recent video gaming and focuses on why, if not high art, video games are something else entirely. Or maybe they are the highest art.

Bissell has serious literary chops and a voluminous knowledge of contemporary film and prose (he is a creative writing major and literary critic, after all). It's the reader of exceeding eclecticism that can digest all of his allusions to Epic Games, Nabokov, John le Carre, Braid , Cutting Crew, and David Foster Wallace (a mere iceberg tip). Every chapter is filled with fascinating interviews with adults who aren't just cynical suits piloting moneygrabbing corporations, but instead a smattering of brilliant and groundbreaking individuals who want to take gaming to an experiential height that we can't yet imagine, finances be damned. Along these chapters, Bissell recounts the games that morphed him into something other than himself, a feeling to which we might relate. Perhaps we snap at our girlfriends' temerity of a goodbye kiss during Demon's Souls (i.e. "What are you thinking!?"). Mayhaps we ignore our supposedly highbrow pursuits. Or simply lament the inordinate amount of time we have spent gaming. Bissell readily admits to 200+hrs playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion , something to which I can entirely relate (120+ playing Dragon Age: Origins and ~150 hrs (so far) with Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim ). Are we doing anything worthwhile with these hours?

Slate.com's Michael Thomsen tried to tackle this question in a recent article entitled "Dark Night (After Night After Night) of the Soul:Is a 100-hour video game ever worthwhile?". I would submit that Thomsen only partially gets the point in his critique of the 100+hour game. The gaming journeys he criticizes in the epics of modern RPGs aren't important to gamers because of what has actually been accomplished (breaking boxes, amassing virtual currency, having polygonal polyamory, or drubbing enemies with increasingly cool magic). It's actually immaterial if the activity is repetitive, irrelevant, or goofy, and boy are some of them goofy. Gaming matters to me, at least today, because it gives me a buzz. Demon's Souls gives me literal goosebumps and can cause a literal rage. The SNES's Final Fantasy III made me weep. Grand Theft Auto IV: Liberty City made the capable author Tom Bissell disappear into another world, and be thankful for the opportunity. If video games don't do anything for you, you most certainly should not be playing. But as long as they do, you should never stop.

Why video games matter? After reading this book I still don't know 🤷‍♀️ The author didn't answer that question. It's a short book, yes but a chaotic one. Ok, he talks a little bit of some of big titles (RE, MGS, GoW) but I don't know, it's too less for me. I guess I've simply expected much more from this book.

EDITORIAL REVIEW: Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of thirty-four. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles, playing titles such as *Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead, BioShock, *and* Oblivion* for, literally, days. If you are reading this flap copy, the same thing can probably be said of you, or of someone you know.Until recently, Bissell was somewhat reluctant to admit to his passion for games. In this, he is not alone. Millions of adults spend hours every week playing video games, and the industry itself now reliably outearns Hollywood. But the wider culture seems to regard video games as, at best, well designed if mindless entertainment.*Extra Lives* is an impassioned defense of this assailed and misunderstood art form. Bissell argues that we are in a golden age of gaming—but he also believes games could be even better. He offers a fascinating and often hilarious critique of the ways video games dazzle and, just as often, frustrate. Along the way, we get firsthand portraits of some of the best minds (Jonathan Blow, Clint Hocking, Cliff Bleszinski, Peter Molyneux) at work in video game design today, as well as a shattering and deeply moving final chapter that describes, in searing detail, Bissell’s descent into the world of *Grand Theft Auto IV*, a game whose themes mirror his own increasingly self-destructive compulsions.Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, *Extra Lives* is like no other book on the subject ever published. Whether you love video games, loathe video games, or are merely curious about why they are becoming the dominant popular art form of our time, *Extra Lives* is required reading.

This was a really really good book, on a subject I'm fascinated-repelled by.

Part of Bissell's accomplishment, to me, is how upfront he is about what he wants out of games-- an emotionally rich experience, one that is worth something in terms of how it casts his own life in a new light. I think this is pretty well understood as what most of us want, but I think if Bissell left it unsaid, as most people would, he'd have circles run around him by designers telling us the other interesting but peripheral things they do. Bissell holds the line, and it serves him really well here.

I don't think that the book lives up to the subtitle, why games matter. The conceit of the title, extra lives, really only comes up in the first essay, though it's a really solid idea-- that these games really do allow us to explore ourselves in a new context. But in the end, this remains a very personal, if approachable, take on video games. It's a lot like Doug Wolk's Reading Comics, though I might like this one a little more (that might be because I don't have opinions about games the way I do about comics, so I talked back to this book less than I did Wolk's. But I also felt its inquiries were more sustained and developed a core concern.)

I'm still not sure what to make of the final chapter, a kind of throw everything at the wall chapter that introduces Bissell's cocaine use pretty explicitly, in terms I don't know how to process-- it almost makes the book, opening up to us a useful parallel to what Bissell gets out of games v. what he gets out of cocaine. Almost. But I feel like parts of it are a little too swept under the rug or raced past. It's good, and I'd read more, without a doubt.

So a book about video games by an author with an impressive resume sounded pretty interesting to me. And it even has a chapter called "Little Big Problems", which I assumed would be about Little Big Planet (by far my kids' favorite video game ever).
I should have known from this bit in the intro what I was getting into:

There are many fine books about the game industry, the theory of game design, and the history of games, overmuch discussion of which will not be found here. I did not write this book as an analyst of industry fortunes (a topic about which I could not imagine caring less) or as a chronicler of how games rose and came to be, and my understanding of the technical side of game design is nil. I wrote this book as a writer who plays a lot of games, and in these pages you will find one man’s opinions and thoughts on what playing games feels like, why he plays them, and the questions they make him think about. In the portions of the book where I address game design and game designers, it is, I hope, to a formally explanatory rather than technically informative end.

I'm very much divided on this book. On the one hand, it's a good introduction to the ideas and aesthetic concerns that underpin much of the modern critical discussion on videogames. Having read this at the same time as someone who is a newcomer to games, they found it very useful in terms of understanding what people talk about when it comes to games - narrative versus gameplay-based stories, the appeal of the moral decision and the self-owned RPG character, gaming's tortured relationship with other media, etc. Unfortunately, the more memoir-ish parts of the book leave a lot to be desired. Bissell has a very strange relationship to his own "geek" status - while many of his criticisms of modern games are quite valid, some of it seems to stem from shame at being associated with something so uncool and childish. Though he is perfectly content telling us about his fascinating cocaine habit at length. Even at three years' age, the book is already showing its age in terms of its casual sexism, with most of the references to women being not as participants, but as disapproving girlfriends or a class of people somehow aloof from the concerns of the sad male nerds who make up games culture (see: the citation of the Vegas comedian's joke about how if a women can't get laid at a games conference, she should just hang up her vagin*). Or escorts/prostitutes. Speaking as a player of games, this book did provide some good written evidence for "why games matter," but it also left me feeling profoundly alienated. Thank god the culture is finally starting to change.

DNF'd at 29% after glancing at some reviews and seeing that this book does not actually get better.

Not only is this book super dated - and the author literally says in the intro that he doesn't care that talking about contemporary games will date him (contemporary in 2006, mind you) - but the author is the most self-righteous, bro-iest dude you can imagine. The book title is misleading, as Bissell spends his word count describing in details (and often in SECOND PERSON perspective) the mechanics of some of his favorite video games, from Fallout 3 to the original Resident Evil . In fact, most of his discord on video games takes the negative perspective, saying that most games are not worthy to be considered art, the writing is terrible ( Fallout 3 , he argues, has writing so bad that it makes Stephanie Myer look good), and he has often been embarrassed to even admit that he enjoys playing video games. Bro - who are you writing this book for?? Oh right, it's definitely for yourself.

In the short amount that I listened, there were also several expressions used that are downright degrading or at the very least, inconsiderate, towards women. To say he once was so addicted to a game that his girlfriend "revoked [his] vagin* privileges" like a brag, and then comparing the enemies in Resident Evil to "a date rape situation" is pretty f*cking messed up. I was hoping for a thoughtful exploration of how games expand the way we experience great narratives, or how they foster creativity. Anything positive, really. This book is trash.

Very interesting and surprisingly personal book that doesn't have answers so much as questions. I have long struggled with the same problem as Bissell, namely, "Are video games even a good thing". I have gone through many of the same addictive, self-destructive behaviours that he has. When I finish a video game, I usually have had an engrossing, good time, and I feel a sense of accomplishment, but I don't feel better for it.

He makes a fairly half hearted argument as to why video games matter - he is really much more interested in the question which he explores at some depth (and really seems on the fence about).

In any event this is a very well written book, large parts of which are about two places I used to work (BioWare and Ubisoft) and I definitely recognize them in his prose (though he was a little to soft on BioWare's writing). His style and vocabulary are very engaging, but above all I was drawn to his honesty. He confesses a lot about himself in this book which lends credibility to his insights and judgements about the games themselves. As a writer he is mostly interested in narrative in video games and the conflict that has with allowing players to construct their own.

This is the best book about video games I've read. I didn't come away feeling like he'd made a solid point, but I did feel like he'd explored the problem(s) well enough to really know what he's talking about. Recommended.