Customer Reviews

Handbook of Computer Game Studies

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I inherited this book as the official textbook for a class I teach on Games and Society. It is excruciatingly boring, and not just because the majority of the articles are festooned with citations of dubious research every 2nd or 3rd sentence. Most of the authors seem to be exceptionally ignorant of video game culture and what it means to play video games. When the conclusions that many of them reach are valid, they are also painfully obvious to anyone who regularly plays games. When the conclusions they reach are highly suspect or flat-out wrong, (all too often the case), this is also painfully obvious to anyone who regularly plays games.

Part of the problem may simply be that most of the studies cited were done more than 10-20 years ago. In a field as rapidly evolving as computer games, the research cited ought to focus more on studies involving games published in the last 5-10 years.

I appreciate the effort to study computer games with more academic rigor and the need for computer game studies to be taken seriously, but this book fails. It has all the trappings of a scholarly work, but lacks meaningful insight or worthwhile analysis. I hope the publisher commissions a second volume with more current research. Hopefully, the authors will include people who are a lot more familiar with games, perhaps even members of the game development community with proven track records in making games that are critically and commercially successful.

Like all massive edited compilation, Handbook of Computer Game Studies has something for almost everybody interested in its topic area, but much that will not interest any particular reader. The book, for me, is defined by its sheer size. It is in an 8.5 X 11 format, and has 27 articles extending over 450 pages. It is intended to be definitive as of its publication date in 2005. However, due to the inevitable lag in hard copy publication processes, it is probably better thought of as definitive as of 2004. This means, of course, in this very rapidly moving field, that some of the content has been outdated by much more recent publications on the web itself, or in more nimble hard-copy journals.

For a full review see Interface, Volume 6, Issue 5.

Only bought this book because it was on my syllibus for a class in University. The book itself is very outdated, bad written and unorganized! Can only recommend it if you HAVE to buy it!

For readers who grew up with Pong, Space Invaders and Atari, this book might come as a shock. Those "kids games" and the people [who are not necessarily kids] are now the subject of scholarly discourses?! Wow. Who would have dared to guess back in 1980?

Hence, it possible to read this book at several levels. One is the way its authors intend. A sober, poker faced analysis of computer gaming. But other readers might try [and fail] to stifle numerous giggles. The book is SO serious!

Although on second consideration, the authors deserve commendation from active players. They are taking computer gaming down the same academic route to respectability that science fiction, in written and movie form, took decades ago.

Still, can you imagine a "Chair of Computer Gaming"??