Customer Reviews

Joystick Nation: How Videogames Ate Our Quarters, Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

An interview that I gave to Ms. Herz in confidence was published out of context, with my name attached, and without any ability to review it before it went to print. Ms. Herz seems totally uninterested in correcting her mistake which caused me a lot of embarrassment. I can only presume that the book is filled with such inaccuracies.

Michael Wahrman

I was intrigued by this book's premise & picked it up eagerly a while back. Given how ubiquitious video games have become, I think it's not implausible that they've had some impact on the way we view the world. Like in Aliens when the guy freaks out and keeps stammering "GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER!". Not the most subtle example but you know what I mean. :)

In addition to reading about the cultural and social effects of video game saturation, I also was looking forward to hearing some crazy stories and learning more about the people who made all the classics (Defender, Myst, etc.) Unfortunately, "Joystick Nation" book just doesn't go into enough detail to be interesting. Herz is prone to glibly tossing off dubious assertions about our generational consciousness, cultural mores, etc. etc., without arguing for these assertions in a coherent or convincing manner. She makes all sorts of claims about how video games have changed us, but rarely backs them up with any detail. After reading the book (it goes by fast but not because it's so fascinating; rather, it's just so flimsy that you can't help finishing it quickly), I felt like I'd just read the first draft of a sort-of-well-written but lazy college paper. The breezy, conversational style would be ok if Herz had deep or funny things to say, but she doesn't. It's frustrating because Herz superficially acts like she thinks video games are important and interesting enough to really explore in depth, yet her writing and analysis are so flimsy that you're left thinking that the subject isn't truly worthy of consideration. Herz's breathless yammering about her brother's use of the word 'kablooie' is typical of the book's style-- it's kind of cute but I just didn't relate or care. She meets the guy who wrote Defender, but instead of asking him insightful or amusing questions, she just goes on and on about how, like, TOTALLY COOL it was to meet the dude. (It's like Ray Romano's dad says on "Everybody Loves Raymond" -- "I could've eaten a bowl of alpha-bits and crapped a better interview.")

"Joystick Nation" isn't all bad-- Herz is at least readable, and she occasionally has an interesting idea or two-- but it's not worth the cover price. My advice is to save your money and wait for someone to give the subject the level of attention it deserves-- or at least tell a better story.

This could've been a great book. One of those cult things that just goes on for years and years. Instead, this book was dead out of the gate, because even the people that love videogames can't like this book because alot of the information is wrong. Game titles, years, people, etc. Of course not all the information is wrong, but I had wanted to use this book (one of the few on videogames) in a research paper in college and it just wasn't reliable. Too bad, it coulda been a contender(read phoenix instead)... Great title though

I had high hopes for this book but by the time I had reached the last page I was very disappointed. The hard facts are few and far between and many pages are devoted to the author's own interpretations and ideas on why games are popular (a little bit too psychological for my tastes).

I found this book lacking in some areas, overwritten in others (the chapter on Doom being my prime example), but still a fun read. From about 1978 to 1983, videogames captured public imagination (pardon the cliche) in the same way that Titanic and Michael Jordan do today. There is no explanation of just why this happened, just a timeline and chronicle. Restricting the scope of this book to one segment of videogames (arcades? computers? home videogame systems?) and explaining the why and not just the what and when, would have made this a better book.

That said, this was still a good book, but it could have been more concise and consistent.

Initially, Herz's enthusiasm is infectious, but her hyperbole soon becomes tiresome. As does David Sheff in *Game Over*, Herz finds practically every game and piece of software she writes about to be brilliant and exciting, even decidedly B-grade titles like *FX Fighter*. In addition, the book is full of factual errors. These are not restricted to statements about videogames: while her most egregious error is to claim that George Lucas was involved with the *Wing Commander* series, which Herz also suggests is related to *Star Wars*, she also writes that the 1980s pop group A-Ha are Swedish, when they are in fact Norwegian. While Herz manages to make some interesting comments about videogames, she arrives at them by accident, and later chapters degenerate into undirected rambles. The book's lack of a conclusion demonstrates its equal lack of an effective structure and overarching argument.

As a life long gamer who has worked in the video game industry, I was very interested in what this book had to say. While the fluffy sounding titled turned me off at first. The books best features are the chapters on early game history and classic games, while the writing that tries to be stylish but fails miserably, littered with bad pop-culture metaphors and not much content. While I liked her writing on her childhood memories of playing games, the rest of the book it just SOOOOOOOO lame!

"Joystick Nation" starts hot, daydreams then peters out and my ultimate question is why was this book written, except maybe to make a few bucks, remininsique and mentally masturbate?

I don't feel so jilted because I got it at my local library, but I can't recommend it at retail prices.

JC Herz isn't attempting a history of videogames or a business story. Instead, she's writing a social commentary about the arcade and home videogame era thus far. But she's not convincing as a PLAYER. It's hard to imagine her being in the trenches with that very narrow demographic of players from 1977-85. It's a very unique group and she doesn't have a feel for it.

Also, and maybe it's because she's relatively young, her voice isn't that of the minimalistic arcade generation -- she's wordy and haughty at times. She's trying to wax poetic and get an A+ it seems.

If you're looking for an arcade history, stay away. She really doesn't know her stuff. Did she do any research? Not that she's factually incorrect about when, say, the Odyssey 2 came out, but she doesn't have a feel at all for what the scene was and the competition between the machines and their players. No perspective.

She gives 10 times more space to Doom than Pac-Man. That's like writing a book about the presidents and devoting only a paragraph to Lincoln and a whole chapter to Kennedy. Both deserve at least equal space because both have a lot of historical value.

Some of JC's interviews go nowhere. Most early game developers keep the party line: "Gee, I never thought videogames would get so big, but the old games are better." Though an interview with the owner of TimeOut on the future of arcades is interesting.

A chapter comparing videogame magazines to Playboy also was a waste of my time.

The book is very readable though and easy to finish. There are some laughs. But it won't really change your mind unless you go into this book without any videogame experience...

Unless you picked it up at a used bookstore. Unfortunately, I paid retail and was less than thrilled at the author's overuse of nostalgia to fill pages. The writing quality lacks structure. Seems a bit too self-referential given the title. Last it is almost patronizing and gratuitous for those who grew up on Atari and Odyssey and tinkered with R/S, Commodore and Timex-Sinclair's.

A better pick would be David Sheff's: Game Over. This book is superficial and trite. In fact, I wouldn't miss it from my shelf.

Also, author does not answer email.

Well, this is more of a memoir than an authoritative history, per se--it's more than a little hit-or-miss in terms of the topics it discusses. Less authoritative than Leonard Herman's Phoenix it may be, but reading it is also significantly less painful--unlike Herman, Herz is actually a decent writer, and the tone is much less leaden. Unfortunately, she also has the tendency to sound faintly supercillious much of the time, which did little to endear her to me. On the whole, this is a relatively entertaining, if flawed, little tome.