Game on : The History and Culture of Videogames

By Australian Centre for the Moving Image and Lucien King

In the last ten years video games have come a long way since Spacewar, which was first developed and shown at MIT in 1962. This edited volume traces the development and technical advances that have taken place over the years.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 185669304X
• ISBN13: 9781856693042
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Laurence King Pub
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Mix of academic & popular articles about the history of gaming

This is an interesting illustrated collection of articles on a huge variety of topics regarding gaming. Includes the academic/scholarly study of video games in pop culture (cultural studies/American studies). Articles include: Violence and the Political Life of Video Games I Love My Video Games Pokemon as Japanese Culture? All Clicked Out Report from the PAL Zone: European Games Culture My Story: Girls Playing Games Broads, A Bitch, Never the Snitch The Art of Contested Spaces Character Forming Gaming the System - Multi-player Worlds Online Telefragging: Monster Movies Story as Play Space: Narrative in Games Do Independent Games Exist? Head Games - The Future of Play

good intro, not very deep, by design

This book accompanies the Game On exhibit. As such it is a good introduction to the growing field of game studies. It makes a good introduction to those who have never thought of videogames as anything but entertainment and shows that videogames are just as worthy of serious academic thought as film or television.That being said, it is only an introduction and does not break any new ground. For someone who is already interested in game studies, this book may be too superficial and lacking in any in-depth analysis. However, this is not what it is attempting to do, and it should be evaluated on thsoe terms. It is richly illistrated throughout and has a nice design. I found the second half of the book to be more interestiing, and found myself asking why some of the articles in the first half were included.Overall, a good introduction with nice pictures. So if you are new to game studies, pick it up, if not you may want to pass, or try to find a used copy at best.