Smartbomb

August 1, 2005
Freelance journalists (and married couple) Chaplin and Ruby team up for a wide-ranging look at the video-game industry. They dwell extensively on the corporations behind the games, from Nintendo's humble origins as a playing card manufacturer, to the extravagances of today's most popular game designers, who have earned millions by applying their world-class computer programming skills to increasingly complex imaginary worlds for players to explore, both peaceful (The Sims
) and violent (Grand Theft Auto
). The game players are the other major part of the story, and Ruby's experiences in the gaming community prove especially helpful as his role-playing character becomes intertwined with that of one of his interview subjects in online multiplayer games like Star Wars Galaxies
(Ruby writes this portion in the third person and mentions his wife's frustrations with the time he spends online without naming her, underscoring the duo's efforts to make themselves invisible in the story). Much of the reporting takes place at gaming tournaments and industry expos, reinforcing the circuslike atmosphere. A chapter on the U.S. military's interest in using video games as both recruiting and training tools adds some gravity, but overall it's easiest to appreciate this work as a whirlwind subcultural tour. Agent, Daniel Greenberg.

April 1, 2006
Adult/High School -This thorough history in eight essay-style chapters begins at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 2001 with CliffyB, a 26-year-old who already had nine years of experience in the industry. The story goes back in time to MIT in the late '50s and the development of the first video game. Moving onward to the present, readers meet developers at Nintendo, the creators of Doom, the developers of the Sims series, and players of Massively Multiplayer Online games. By the book's finish, the arrival of video games as the dominant form of contemporary entertainment could not be made clearer than by the embrace of gaming by two behemoths of industry -the U.S. Military and Microsoft. The essays consist of both first-person interviews and well-noted research and give a holistic picture of how the industry developed the way it did. Lots of numbers and facts back up the popularity of video games -for example, it only took a year for PlayStation2 to appear in 10 million homes, a feat that took the telephone 35 years to accomplish. This immensely readable book will have great appeal with gaming teens, but should also be required reading for librarians interested in learning more about gaming and its role in our culture and our teen-focused libraries." -Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, Belcamp, MD"

Copyright 2006 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2005
Video games, the authors tell us in this informative and entertaining history, were an entirely unexpected--and, at first, seemingly pointless--offshoot of the early days of computer science. A nuclear physicist, William Higinbotham, created the first video game, a rudimentary version of table tennis, in 1958. Now, in the industry, he's known as the grandfather of the video game. Then, he was just a guy playing around with an analog computer and a five-inch oscilloscope screen. The authors trace the video game's evolution from its exceedingly humble beginnings to its present position as a dominant force in the entertainment industry. They tell the tale with flair and an air of mystery, introducing a new character (say, Nolan Bushnell), telling us about him (he was an entrepreneur who saw profit in other people's games), and, only after we're hooked, revealing why he's in the story (he called his tiny company Atari). The best history of the video-game phenomenon since Steven L. Kent's " The Ultimate History of Video Games " (2001). (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)