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Digital Gameplay: Essays on the Nexus of Game and Gamer

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Digital Gameplay isn't another game programmer's handbook, but a collection of scholarly, college- level essays on the topic of digital games with a survey of the role of the game. Fifteen essays discuss how players interact with games - essential information for programmers to know - and survey both physical and mental aspects of playing. While video games are also included, any game programmer will find discussions of how games are perceived and used by players to be important considerations in organizing and developing routines.

Garrelts has assembled a first rate collection of cutting edge, razor sharp video game scholarship and theory. Players and teachers interested in the ins and outs, ups and downs, overs and unders and arounds and throughs of game play will find this easy to pick up and impossible to put down. Taylor, Jensen and Castell work with the provocative "outside the box" metaphor to make some interesting observations on Diablo II (so good, in fact, that I'll forgive the title's obvious allusion to Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves.") Boulter's Cyborgs are People Too makes excellent use of Donna Harway's The Cyborg Constituion to evaluate the popular game "The Simulations." The crown jewel in a well-guilded crown is the essay by Marc C. Santos and Sarah E. White. The essay is titled Playing With Ourselves, and it is highly enjoyable for its rhythmic, copious prose exploring Lacanian aspects of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. This hefty load of scholarship builds to a more than satisfying conclusion that exhausts and exhilerates the reader.