Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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!

This book is a well-crafted and focused look at the rise of computer games in popular culture. Anything involving the gaming community will generate flaming and name-calling but this book tries, and succeeds, in writing some of the early history of the gaming culture. Rather than cover too much, it limits its focus to mainly Richard Garriott and his Ultima series and Doom. It examines the people, decisions, accidents and politics that brought these two gaming worlds into existence.

As I read it I remembered the great fun I had playing the early Ultima games and the sheer amazement I felt the first time I played Doom. I have played computer games since Carter was President. Reading this book brought back some of the great memories of that early gaming and some of those "wow" moments.

The culture and rise of computer games so closely mirrors the rise of the computer culture. I recommend this book for anyone who is interested in both.

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.

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).

What first surprised me about Dungeons & Dreamers is that it's entertaining. I picked it up intending to get a quick sense of it then couldn't put it down--this book is funny, from Richard Garriott's whacky childhood projects before he developed games to the inside spats that tore up later, successful developer teams. What continued to surprise me is the book's scope. All the history is there, from star developers, companies, and even players like PMS (psycho men slayers) and LAN party-goers who shaped the gaming world. But the book pushes further to tell why people play games, why games have progressed the way they have, and why they're here to stay. Gaming is elevated from just a "mind-numbing weird thing" to the creative, productive community it is; I don't think anyone--gamers or anti-gamers or anyone in between--can read this book without gaining a deeper understanding and respect for the community and where it's headed.

After finishing Masters of Doom and the Ultimate History of Video Games I found Dungeons and Dreamers to be fairly choppy and unfocused. Masters of Doom was an interesting (albeit odd) focus on the rise to fame of John Carmack and John Romero and provides the insight as to how the average person became famous and the changes in technology that took place during that time period. The Ultimate History of video games is a very thorough read and chronicles the changing faces and times during the rise of technology and has the inside information on about any event or video game phenomenon you can imagine. Unfortunately, the first 1/3 of this book is an interesting tale about the famous 'Lord British', which I enjoyed, but the remaining 2/3 is a bit of a mess. A brief rehash of the Doom phenomenon (which is done much better in the Masters of Doom book), a very boring (and lengthy) section on the correlation of video games and violence (Columbine is mentioned WAY too many times) and some snippets of the LAN party and MMOG phenomenon fills out the book. The writing is choppy, feels like it hasn't been thoroughly proofread, and makes the intellectual side of me cringe. It is not uncommon for a concept to be described in one paragraph and described in the same words two or three paragraphs later. A full book on Richard Garriott probably would have been a better idea, as his life is very interesting and many of us would associate our gaming lives with him more than any other figure. This book seems to be geared towards complete non-gamers, which is a shame, because I would imagine most people who would buy this book understand the gaming world and the important events in its history. I was looking for the real insider/behind the scenes view of video games and was stuck with an uninsightful overview instead. Stick with the other two books if you have to make a choice where to spend your dollars.

I Googled my name and it came up in this book so I had to buy it, LOL. :) They should have called me when they wrote it, however. :) I have not read the book, but I read the page where my name was and I have to say it is so full of inaccuracies I never rest of the book.

I was there. I could clear up a couple of things that I saw.

It says that "Richard was not much of a dungeon master." I LOLed at that. Richard and Bob White were the two BEST dungeon masters in our group.

Also, it says that Richard had no interest in sports. LOL! He excelled on the track team. I went to many of his track meets!

In addition, it said that there were parents at our games. This thing that they say about the porch being relegated to the parents "smoking and drinking" ??? I never saw anyone's parents there. And I was there every weekend.

I wish that they had interviewed one of us that was there. This was a very magical time. We had a lot of fun playing D&D. We started playing the game when there was only the one box with some dice and one book. Later we bought all the additional supplemental books.

Then, of course, Richard got his Apple II and wrote Akalabeth. :) That all came later...after we had been playing D&D for a while.

Richard had a knack for the computer because of his science fair project. He did a project that studied the wave propagation from the sun (at the time his dad was one of the world experts on the Sun and because he had been studying it had the world EVA record - he had been changing film in the camera on the spacecraft) that had computer analysis. So we were always going up to NASA and using their computers to analyze his data. (But we were up there already because that was where our Explorers post met.)

good times :)

Time and time again I had read and heard bits and pieces of Garriott's story but was truly amazed when presented with it all in one sitting with the book "Dungeons and Dreamers". Brad King and John Borland show a true appreciation of the changing world of games. In "Dungeons and Dreamers" the authors provide us with a detailed look at many of the major events and games, which has shaped online gaming over the years. This book provides readers with a quick look into the lives and tells the stories of many familiar people; from programmers to gamers and those who helped shaped online gaming communities from its conception.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic". This is a fun, well presented and informative story that is definitely worth checking out!

This book taught me alot about how the games got started and how video, board, and pen and paper games bring people to gether if any ones looking for an interesting read this is for you. im going to buy and apple2 just so i can play some of those games. ITS GREAT!

First of all- this is one of the few books I bought and could not put it down for more than a few hours. I will admit I'm a bit bias as Richard Garriott is one of my personal heroes in life. But added surprise of how Dungeons & Dragon got started in the first chapter really pulled this book together for me as an indie game developer. Hoping to walk in the very foot steps of those mentioned in this book, I found it more as a roadmap of how to plan ahead for my own future gaming company and things I should consider. Without trying to, this book represents the D&D-SCA-Gamer type of person, who wishes to escape the mundane world around us. To live and breathe in a Fantasy world where the possibilities are only limited by the imagination. Growing up in Texas myself, I was surprised to find out how many other Texans game developers there were, aside from Richard. I would recommend this book for any interested in RPGs/Gaming/SCA.