Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic [Hardcover]

Brad King (Author), John Borland (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 2003 | Series: One-off

Enter the quiet living rooms and cacophonous gaming environs of gaming kingpins like Richard Garriott and John Carmack, who invented games such as Quake and DOOM. Learn about gamers who make their living by winning gaming tournaments, and secrets of devoted gamers who practically live at LAN parties and gaming conventions.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

King and Borland's crisp study of computer game specialists reads like a screenplay and would make ideal film material. The authors offer an intriguing protagonist in Richard Garriott, who overcame disapproval from his astronaut father and the lonely isolation of being a geek to produce the Ultima Online series. Vowing to create dungeon worlds as rich and frightening as Tolkien's, Garriott went into business with his brother and pursued his goal through lean years and unsatisfying corporate alliances. The authors, both journalists, also profile other colorful characters, such as Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw, creators of the first MUD (multiple-user dungeon), a place where gamers could meet online; John Carmack and John Romero, creators of Doom ("the ultimate visceral experience of kill-or-be-killed"); and Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, Dungeons & Dragons' masterminds. King and Borland cover dramatic events, including attacks by conservative Christians, who felt Dungeons & Dragons was satanic and encouraged worship of the occult, violent behavior and suicide. Equally involving is the gaming world's exclusion and harassment of women until such rebels as college student Vangie Beal formed a women's gaming network called PMS (the Psycho Men Slayers). Garriott comes across as an inspiring figure when he introduces a system of ethics and morals into the games, stressing honesty, compassion, values, justice, sacrifice, honor, spirituality and humility. Even non-tech-inclined readers will be intrigued by the sense of community King and Borland describe, and their epilogue image of Garriott living in a castle, complete with moat, will delight fantasy lovers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Back Cover

"Dungeons and Dreamers has the best attributes of the sometimes geeky computer culture it chronicles: compassion, humor, and computer-like accuracy. Anyone interested in the history of computer gaming should read this book." --Lisa Mason, Game Informer Magazine

"If you've read King and Borland in Wired and CNET, you don't need convincing. If you haven't, buy this book. Read it, visit their blog for daily infusions, and thank me later. --Brad Hill, The Digital Songstream

"Gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry. How it became one is possibly the biggest business story of our day." --Richard A. Martin, Complex Magazine

From the dreamers who created the medium to the players who make it a worldwide phenomenon, witness computer games' laser-beam rise from blips on university computer science program screens to their pervasive presence in our everyday lives. Inside, you'll meet the creators, the crusaders, and the celebrity players, including:

• Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, masterminds behind Dungeons & Dragons--the role-playing game that inspired generations of computer game developers
• Willie Crowther and Don Woods, creators of the early text-based computer role-playing game Adventure, which eventually became Zork!
• Richard Garriott, whose popular series of Ultima games eventually spawned the massively multiplayer online world, Ultima Online
• Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw, creators of the first MUD, a place where gamers could meet online and go adventuring in a shared world
• John Carmack and John Romero, the programming geniuses who created DOOM!, the ultimate visceral experience of kill-or-be-killed
• "Thresh," whose deathmatch skills were so great he won Carmack's Ferrari and earned a front-page profile in The Wall Street Journal
• Henry Jenkins, the media critic who found himself unexpectedly defending such violent games as Mortal Kombat before a Senate subcommittee

Dungeons and Dreamers weaves together threads of influence from Gary Gygax's Dungeons & Dragons and Richard Garriott's Ultima through John Carmack and John Romero's DOOM and beyond. The story of computer gaming's early days stretches from California's balmy shores through the hill country of Texas to a sleepy little town in the south of England. It is the ultimate "revenge of the nerds" tale in which D&D players, Society for Creative Anachronism aficionados, science fiction fans, and young computer programmers come together to produce a multi-billion-dollar industry that merges with the burgeoning telecommunications industry and the Internet boom of the 1990s to explode into a mass-market phenomenon.

Former Wired correspondent Brad King and CNET writer John Borland take you on an all-access tour of the wild, weird, wonderful world of PC gamers. Learn why violence seems to be inherent in computer gaming, why the medium attracts mostly men, and why the violence sometimes spills over into reality, as it did at Columbine. Explore how the face of the average gamer is changing with deathmatch teams such as PMS--Psycho Men Slayers--the first all-female Quake clan, as well as the women who use Quake templates to create online sex parlors. Go inside the increasingly popular LAN parties, where gamers spend sleepless weekends in the dark glued to glowing monitors, as well as Internet gaming parlors--also called PC Bangs--that are sprouting like mushrooms along the West Coast. Visit the EverQuest Fan Faires where role-playing gamers come full circle and actually meet in person.

Electronic games have become so culturally pervasive that they influence the way we perceive the world. Dungeons and Dreamers serves up a slice of the origins of today's computer game culture and gives us a sense of the amazing realms into which it may be heading.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 273 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media; 1 edition (August 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0072228881
• ISBN-13: 978-0072228885
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,020,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A thoroughly enjoyable read October 29, 2003

By J. Garcia

Format:Hardcover

I am a 41 year old gamer. I was around for Pong! to Atari to Colecovision to the PC of today. Although I thoroughly enjoy playing computer games, I never knew how this whole medium got started. By drawing from interviews of the gaming pioneers, who played endless nights of Dungeons and Dragons, to the dreamers of new virtual worlds, this book lays out how the electronic games industry got to be the multi-billion dollar entertainment monster that it is today. Most notably, Richard Garriot and his rise from computer programming hobbyist to one of the most succesful "Dreamers" of the Role Playing Games genre. Other stories, such as how John Carmack, John Romero, and Warren Spector are considered game gods. As we strive for more avenues of entertainment today, this book has the insitefulness of sharing what drives these digital storytellers to dream up new worlds for gamers to play in. Pick up this book if you are interested in an entertaining history behind computer games roots. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good overview, a little too much on the Garriott September 2, 2004

By Christopher Lye

Format:Hardcover

Overall, the book provides a good overview of the evolution of the genre detailing the early use of university computing resources for covert sessions of SpaceWar, Adventure and Colossal Cave thru to the emergence of the Professional Gaming League.

Where the narrative starts to get bogged down is when it gets to Richard Garriott (aka Lord British), the creator of the Ultima series of games. (For the record, I'm a huge Ultima fan - the original Ultima packaging, with a knight on a black warhorse facing off against a dragon emerging from hot lava, was the reason I bought my first computer.) Once the authors get to Garriott, the pace slows as we explore his life in extended detail from his early family life to the release of Ultima Online. In contrast, significantly less time is spent on the other pivotal computer games like Doom, Half-Life and EverQuest. While I'd be the first to point to Garriott's role in the development of this genre, all roads don't necessarily lead to Lord British.

Net/Net: Decent overview of a topic that has often been eclipsed by the more glamorous console videogames industry. Would have appreciated less detail on Garriott, and more on the other games.

Full Disclosure: Reviewer works as a marketer for Windows and Xbox games at Microsoft.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars True fans and gamers, it's must-read material May 23, 2004

By J. Veon

Format:Hardcover

Very enjoyable and non-heavy book stretching back to Gygax and his crew of Chainmail folks up through the current crop of MMORPG play (yeah, Carmack and Romero and all those guys are in it too). A great read and a diverse one too, in that it discusses the technical issues of game development and game play, video games in a social context and under fire from concerned activists, and also a cool look at the personal lives of the key players who introduced the games themselves, Never boring, and although it's not a super heavy read it's got definite gems of inspiration and insight. It's well written and engaging. If you're a fan, (especially if you had a C64/Atari/Pong and spent time with the 20 sided die) it's a must have. Lots of fun! I'd disregard the 1-star bad review (if you read past page 14, it gets much more interesting Kathy82...that goes for most books, btw).