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Aeonite writes "As the title suggests, Game Design: A Practical Approach presents a practical approach to game design — one that is almost too practical in places. The book does a good job of covering many of the foundational elements of game design (called "atoms" by the author), but in places the level of practical detail — and the heavy focus on Lua code examples — is a bit hard to work through. Readers allergic to code may find themselves skipping over swaths of text instead of actually reading it." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Game Design: A Practical Approach author Paul Schuytema pages 416 publisher Charles River Media rating 6 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 978-1-58450-471-9 summary A practical, often code-heavy guide to game design Schuytema is a game industry veteran, perhaps best known for having worked on the original incarnation of Prey back in 1998 or thereabouts. These days it seems he's employed by the University of Illinois as an Extension Specialist, and it certainly seems to have rubbed off on him, as the book is written in a very scholarly, textbook-like fashion. The preface speaks of "foundational information," and while the exciting parts of working in the game industry are mentioned as well, generally the book's subtitle ("A Practical Approach") is precisely what you get.

The book is broken into three parts. The first, the aptly (and practically) named "Introduction to Game Design," consists of six chapters, covering the basic foundational elements of game design, game design documents, coding tools and the like. The advice in the first four chapters, in particular, comes across as a bit too practical, if not downright pedantic, as the author discusses things like listening, taking notes, and reading. In chapter 4 the author even covers the merits of breathing properly, getting enough sleep and not eating junk food (good luck encouraging that at a game company; we lived on Reese's Peanut Butter Cups at Perpetual Entertainment). One wonders if the current generation of whippersnappers, just entering the industry, really needs to be told to get a good night's sleep; if so, we're in for some interesting games over the next few decades.

Some of the advice here is genuinely useful and interesting, such as methods for helping inspire creative thought, brainstorming and developing memory. Chapters 5 and 6 are also more relevant to game design; the former covers game design documents, pitch docs, functional specifications, and the like, and is one of the tightest and most useful chapters in the book. Chapter 6 then dives headlong into the Lua scripting language, which is where the book's focus on game design sort of drifts sideways into the realm of game development. From this point on, the book is sporadically riddled with code examples, references to the example game on the included CD, and detailed explanations of variables, operators, functions and control structures. This is useful, if dry, but it seems to be directed more at the indie "casual game" industry where game designer, game programmer, game artist, game writer, and game publisher are all the same person.

The second part of the book, "Game Design Theory," covers high level design concepts broken down into what the author calls "game atoms". Examples include things like: having a clear goal for the player; providing subvictories to the player; allowing the player to affect the game world; making the context of the game understandable to the player; and so on. These are insightful, and easy to understand and digest, and were the entire book filled with nothing but these I would find it all the more valuable. Sadly, this section is also the shortest in the book (spanning just over 50 pages), and although later chapters in this section do manage to dive into things like player perceptions and challenges, I find myself wanting more. In covering the concept of game "flow" and losing oneself in the moment, the section does earn geek points for citing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose name looks like catlike typing should have been detected. But I digress.

Part 3, approximately half of the book, is devoted to "Real-World Game Design," which moves away from "theatrical underpinnings" and into more (you guessed it) "practical" issues. Here, specific "atoms" such as UI, inventory, power-ups, puzzles, conflicts, and the like are covered in some depth, each presented with code to show how the relevant "atom" might be programmed (examples taken from the sandbox game named Eye Opener, included on the accompanying CD). In places the density of code calls to mind the BASIC game programming books I owned in the late '80s, where if I had 6 hours to type I could make a rocket blast off the top of my Apple IIe monitor. In fact, one of the most interesting comments is on page 336 where the author discusses early games on the Apple II, where "(r)eplay of the game meant going for higher scores, since a single pass through the game was maybe 20 minutes tops." Schuytema speaks as if these are games from a bygone era, but it seems to me he's basically describing the modern casual game, of which there are many, many thousands in the wild. Much of the latter material, alas, seems to drift back into the realm of the "overly practical," with the author covering storytelling atoms such as outlining, writing, revising, and working with a writer. The final chapter, "Next Steps," then presents the ever popular "how to break into the industry" section, which covers very practical, but again somewhat obvious topics such as going to school, networking, and following game websites.

Each chapter ends with a summary and a series of "Chapter Exercises" that hammer home the feeling that this book is really more of a textbook, complete with homework assignments, rather than a casual read. Even the index is almost TOO complete and practical, with entries for brief, passing mentions of Barnes & Noble and Yahoo!; I was surprised not to find an entry for Mountain Dew, since it's mentioned a few times more often in the text and seems somewhat more relevant to the game industry. The book also offers a number of "from the trenches" sidebars throughout, each featuring veterans espousing on various elements of the game industry. These are interesting and often insightful, but their overall impact is somewhat reduced considering that fully half of them (11 of 22) feature the author himself. It seems that a broader selection of insights and examples from other designers in the industry would have served to balance the book a bit more.

Also worth at least a passing mention is the issue of the postage-stamp-sized images and screenshots that pepper game books these days. Many of the pictures in this book are difficult to make out due to their clarity and size (Figure 1.1 looks like some guys from Home Depot are about to encounter the Blair Witch), but most can be puzzled through. Even then, although they generally have relevance to the subject being discussed they often don't really reinforce the concept at hand in a useful fashion: Figure 3.1 is a picture of a marble notebook and some pencils, as if the book were written in a future time when knowledge of writing materials was lost; Figure 3.4 is captioned "Use your finger as an eye guide..." and contains a picture of a book with a finger on it; Figure 10.3's caption mentions "the samurai sword" weapon in Shadow Warrior, yet the screenshot apparently depicts a grenade launcher. The capper is probably page 194, which is supposed to illustrate multiplayer gaming, but instead (as far as I can tell) depicts two mid-'90s Inside Sales reps playing Solitaire instead of phoning clients. Possibly they are car salesmen; it's not clear.

Warts aside, as a whole Game Design: A Practical Approach covers quite a lot of terrain in quite a useful fashion, and hits all the major foundational points about game design. Though it does contain quite a lot of Lua code, this is admittedly not as irrelevant as it could have been, since Lua is used in a wide assortment of games, from Far Cry to Natural Selection 2, Warhammer Online to The Witcher. The book is a few years old at this point, but it seems that it will remain relevant as long as Lua remains a viable programming language in the game industry. Left-brainers in search of a fairly crunchy and quite practical book about game design AND development (and in particular those who want to design and develop their own games, rather than work for someone else) will be quite happy with the material here. Those right-brainers more comfortable amidst the fluffier bits of the game industry, however, may find themselves checking their watches halfway through the second act.

You can purchase Game Design: A Practical Approach from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "Featuring a subtitle that is almost longer than the preface, Vintage Games: An Inside Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time offers a retrospective look at those games which authors Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton feel were, in their words, 'paradigm shifters; the games that made a difference.' As the preface points out, these are not necessarily best-selling games, innovative games, or novel games, but rather titles that, 'in their own special way changed videogames forever.'" Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Vintage Games author Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton pages 408 publisher Focal Press rating 8 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 978-0-240-81146-8 summary A look at the most influential games of the past four decades The book itself features 25 chapters, each devoted to the study of a particular title that best stands out as "vintage" in its particular genre. Those games chosen as particularly "vintage" are (in order): Alone in the Dark, Castle Wolfenstein, Dance Dance Revolution, Diablo, Doom, Dune II, Final Fantasy VII, Flight Simulator, Grand Theft Auto III, John Madden Football, King's Quest, Myst, Pac-Man, Pole Position, SimCity, Space Invaders, Street Fighter II, Super Mario 64 (covered in tandem with Tomb Raider), Super Mario Bros.,Tetris, The Legend of Zelda, The Sims, Ultima, Ultima Online, and Zork. In addition, nine additional "Bonus Chapters" are available online at the book's website, covering Defender, Elite, Pinball Construction Set, Pong, Robotron: 2084, Rogue, Spacewar!, Star Raiders, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

Though listing the titles here seems a bit tedious, it does serve two purposes. First, it demonstrates the broad range of game genres and titles covered in the book, with selections made from across four decades of gaming history. Worth noting in this regard is that each chapter is not solely dedicated only to the titular game; related games that both preceded and followed the selected title are also discussed, and although I didn't keep count many hundreds of titles are at least mentioned, if not covered in some depth. Indeed, this broad range leads to one of the minor issues I have with the book, which is a slight feeling of imbalance and inconsistency between chapters.

By way of example, the first chapter on 1992's Alone in the Dark begins with a two page look at the title itself, followed by a brief peek back at other "horror" games such as 1981's Haunted House, 1982's Dracula and 1988's Splatterhouse. The chapter then dives back into a detailed overview of the introductory scene of Alone in the Dark (along with illustrative screenshots), followed by four pages covering the game's sequels and some brief mentions of Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Chapter 2, covering Castle Wolfenstein, follows more or less the same formula of focusing on the titular game, as do Chapter 7, covering Final Fantasy VII, Chapter 9, covering GTA III, and Chapter 15, on SimCity.

However, this "formula" is not followed in many of the other chapters, which makes reading the book from cover-to-cover a somewhat uneven experience. Chapter 3, covering Dance Dance Revolution only really devotes about four of the chapter's 11 pages to DDR itself, instead choosing to spend more collective time (and screenshots) on related subjects like Dragon's Lair, Video Jogger, the Nintendo Power Pad, Sega's Activator, and Karaoke Revolution (among others). Chapter 10, covering John Madden Football goes for over a dozen pages before it truly covers the title in question on five entertaining and screenshot-packed pages. Chapter 14, covering Pole Position and Chapter 17, on Street Fighter II are other notable examples where the focus is not as tightly aimed at the vintage title in question.

This is not to say that the writing is flawed; on the contrary, it is always entertaining and interesting, and frequently illuminating. Loguidice and Barton cover a lot of terrain, and they are not afraid to point out the warts as well as the beauty marks in their selections. For those who grew up with video games in their house starting with the Atari 2600 (or before), the book is like a trip through time, giving the reader a chance to reminisce about days gone by while also learning about the many titles he or she didn't even known existed. All of this material is written in an informative yet casual style that never feels stilted or pretentious, nor too fanboyish. Indeed, the only awkwardness is the inconsistency in coverage from chapter to chapter, which sort of feels like the authors — rather than co-write each chapter — sort of divided the book in half. I have no idea if this is the case, and there are certainly no glaring stylistic differences from chapter to chapter; all are equally entertaining.

The above chapter list also demonstrates that the titles are arranged in alphabetical order, as opposed to release date or genre. While this certainly makes a sort of structural sense, it does feel a bit awkward while reading the book cover-to-cover, as the reader is constantly dancing back and forth through time, from 1992 to 1981, followed by five titles released in the '90s, a title from 1980, and then 2001's GTA III. In addition, the decision to alphabetize The Legend of Zelda and The Sims in the T's, rather than the L's and S's respectively, does feel a bit odd (especially since the titles are listed under L and S in the index). Whereas Ultima and Ultima Online, and Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Bros. are in adjacent chapters, The Sims and SimCity are separated by six chapters. This is an admittedly minor quibble, however.

If there is a more-than-minor flaw with the book, it is the same flaw that seems to beset all books covering the video game industry: the screenshots, and their inconsistent placement throughout the text. Occasionally, a screenshot will actually fall on the same page where the game it depicts is being mentioned, but in many cases screenshots appear a page or two away (a mention of Second Life comes to mind in this regard. In several cases, screenshots actually overwhelm the text (most notably on pages 312-313), and fewer would have served better. There are also a number of "back of box" shots, which hardly seem as interesting to the reader as an in-game screenshot would be; in one case, almost an entire page is given over to a blown-up back-of-box shot of Maxwell Manor, which otherwise barely gets a mention in the main text.

Also worth mentioning is that screenshots do not always guarantee title mentions, and vice versa. In some cases, the vintage title being covered in a chapter is given many screenshots, whereas in other cases there are only one or two devoted to that game title. Some other mentioned titles are given a lot of text but no screenshot, such as Resident Evil, Metal Gear, and Half-Life. Other screenshots depict titles that are not even mentioned in the text (though they are still relevant to the subject at hand, as the captions generally make clear); examples include Silent Service, Blades of Steel and Mario Kart: Super Circuit. In places it often feels as if the authors are "making do" with the art resources available to them, rather than placing the images that would best suit the topic.

Whatever the reason for these sorts of issues, they present only the occasional bump in what is otherwise a very smooth and entertaining ride. The somewhat inconsistent coverage of titles means that readers looking to read about their particular favorite game may be in for a treat, or may be disappointed, depending on which particular game they're looking to read about. However, this is not that book. What Vintage Games is, is a four-decade retrospective on 25 games that have truly made a difference, and readers who expect just that (as you now do) will come away wholly entertained.

You can purchase Vintage Games from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "Equal parts ninja geekery and pop-cultural satire, The Ninja Handbook falls into that odd category of book that presents fiction as reality. Numerous Guides to Piracy have been published, and more than a few authors have taken a crack at Zombie Survival Guides, the most popular spin-off being the zombie novel World War Z, which is now on its way towards Hollywood. Of course, the creators of the Ask a Ninja website have taken the opposite tack here, having first staked their claim as an Internet video sensation before moving on to "old media."" Keep reading below to find out what secret moves Michael learned from this book. The Ninja Handbook author Douglas Sarine and Kent Nichols pages 336 publisher Three Rivers Press rating 9 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 978-0-307-40580-7 summary An old media incarnation of the popular Ask a Ninja website Ask A Ninja is not the first Ninja website to turn bookish; the first "Ninja Handbook" to hit the shelves was Robert Hamburger's Real Ultimate Power: The Official Ninja Book, published on July 1, 2004 based on the website which hit its peak of popularity way back in 2002. Then there was my own Ninja Burger Honorable Employee Handbook, published in late May of 2006 based on a website started as a goof in June of 2000. Both of those books were published by Citadel Press, and in that light also worth mentioning here is the New York Times bestseller The Alphabet of Manliness, written by one Maddox, purportedly a pirate.

The Ninja Handbook, however, is entirely about ninja. Branded as an "Official Product of the International Order of Ninjas," it's an exploration of the lessons a non-ninja, or nonja, needs to learn in order to become a ninja. Of course, the book is subtitled "This Book Looks Forward To Killing You Soon," so one might expect that the lessons to be taught aren't quite so easy, or ordinary.

The book is nominally broken up into seven sections, although the content is random enough, and the humor fluid enough, that any attempt at organization seems futile at best. In many ways the book's sense of humor drifts about in the same general area as the Real Ultimate Power Book. However, that book's focus on what might best be called "12-year-old humor" (i.e.,guitar-wailing, excrement jokes, and Hippos) is decidedly different from the Ask a Ninja book which never breaks character. Ninjas are not "sweet" and "totally cool" in this book; they are savage killers with a made-up ancient history of the sort likely to send Wikipedia editors into reversion-driven nervous breakdowns.

Section 1 offers introductory advice and information about ninja, including how to form a ninja clan and make a clan flag. Section 2 teaches the Path to nearly ninja-hood, broken up into subsections that cover (in turn) the Nonja (non-ninja), those who are Ninjaish, the Ninjalike, the "Whooooooooo," (the sound of a gentle breeze) and then the I.T.A.N. ("Is That A Ninja?"). Along the way The Ninja teaches (or at least briefly mentions) the ninja basics: the ninja code, requirements to being a ninja, safe sword use, shuriken, pirates, mythical beasts, invisible scrolls, and smoke bombs, among many other topics. There are also plenty of sidewise pokes at Google Maps, Vampire Pumpkins, Fox News, A-Ha, Billy Joel, Woody Allen, and the like, the pop culture references sometimes plain to see, and at other times buried beneath in the subtext.

After a very short Section 3 (almost entirely comprised of Ninja Merit Badges, which as one might expect are all solid black), Section 4 teaches Ninja Skills, including Jumping, Spinning, Punching, Stabbing and Kicking, the latter illustrated via a list of 100 different kicks including "10 Piggies of Pain," "Driving Miss Daisy" and "Palace of Endless Toes." The book then dives headlong into the realm of the bizarre, with Section 5 covering "The Worlds" as in other dimensions and realms of existence, as well as magic and myth. The latter section does manage to clamber back out of the primordial stew onto solid ground when it looks at ninja movies, with a particularly hard look at Batman (not a ninja, as it turns out).

Since the reader has survived this far, Section 6 welcomes him or her to the International Order of Ninja, covering the top brass of the organization, ninja internships, and a bit of ninja rap music. Section 7 then introduces the new ninja to their Mission, an endless quest wherein they follow in the footsteps of the many ninja who have come before them. How many? There is an illustration of a ninja riding a pterodactyl, if that's any help. A lengthy timeline and a one page non-glossary close out the book on an abrupt note.

Obviously, this is a book designed for people who like ninja, but more than that it's a book for those who enjoy a mix of intelligent humor and surreal, near-stream-of-consciousness nonsense. The book is not for everyone; it does have a very scattershot feel in places, particularly if you're not prepared to read it all the way through. While there are jokes on every page, this is not a Mystery Science Theater 3000 sort of book where you can turn it on in the middle of an episode and immediately fall into synch with the humor. But while any individual joke (or page) on its own might be somewhat hard to swallow, taken as a whole the entire piece allows you to immerse yourself in an imaginary world somewhere next door to the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

In that regard, the general tone of the book is best compared with the likes of a John Hodgman, whose book The Areas of My Expertise included a list of 700 Hobo names which he dutifully recited in the audio book version (N.B., The Ninja Handbook is also being released in audio book format). On its own, out of context, such a list is merely awkward and possibly irritating to read (or listen to). But in context, as a part of an entire book full of similar ludicrousness, it's the sort of thing you can just immerse yourself in, and appreciate on a ninja Zen level. The same might be said of the Ask a Ninja video series as well: watch one episode, and you probably won't "get it," but give yourself time to watch them all, and it all suddenly makes sense.

Unless you're a pirate, of course, since pirates and ninja don't get along. As I write this, it's the eve of International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19), and I'm beginning preparations for the opposing Day of the Ninja (December 5), entering its 6th year. What is it about pirates and ninja that attracts fans and sells books? Whatever it is, there's obviously something to the whole "ninja vs pirate" thing, and The Ninja Handbook represents a strong argument for the continuation of the funny fad. Obviously Three Rivers Press agrees; according to Publishers Marketplace, the book was sold to Crown Publishing (a division of Random House) for "six figures." That'll buy a lot of shuriken.

You can purchase The Ninja Handbook from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "Quests have always been a part of fantasy gaming; from the earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons to World of Warcraft's myriad quest lines, quests have given players purpose beyond button-pressing and mindless grinding. Jeff Howard's Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narrative is an exploration of such quests in both literary and gaming contexts, comparing and contrasting their appearances in each medium and striving to bring the two worlds closer together by imbuing game quests with more meaning." Read below for the rest of Michael's review Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives author Jeff Howard pages 248 publisher A.K. Peters Ltd rating 8 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 978-1-56881-347-9 summary A comparison of quests in both literature and gaming In his preface, Howard first attempts to define quests, both in his own terms and with respect to the likes of Campbell and Frye. In short, a narrative quest is a "journey to attain a meaningful goal," such as one might find in The Odyssey, The Faerie Queene, or The Quest for the Holy Grail. Such quests are romantic, archetypal, and laden with meaning and purpose. On the contrary, a game quest is in Howard's words "an activity in which players must overcome challenges to reach a goal." The disparity in the language used here is clear, especially when Howard goes on to clarify game quests as being "about action that is meaningful to a player on the level of ideas..." Narrative quests are about meaningful goals; game quests are about meaningful action. Howard quotes Auden as saying that "the search for a lost button is not a quest," but is this not exactly the sort of quest we find in MMOs like WOW? Time-filling quests to give the player some sort of activity, to provide "meaningful play" in the absence of meaningful goals.

This inherent problem with quests in games is further touched upon in the introduction to the book, which explains that its own goal is to prove quests out as a bridge between games and narratives. "[I]nteractivity is a prerequisite of enactment but is not sufficient to produce it...," says Howard. "[E]nactment requires active, goal-directed effort, often in the form of balancing long-term and short-term goals." Campbell, Frye, Auden and Propp are all consulted and cited here, exploring their own takes on quests in terms of their place in the heroic monomyth, medieval romance, subjective personal experience, and a "sequence of defined transformations," respectively. However, the most enlightening point comes after an exploration of the history of quest games (from D&D through WOW) where, quoting Tronstad, the author explains that "the paradox of questing is that as soon as meaning is reached, the quest stops functioning as quest." The profusion of more-or-less meaningless quests in MMORPGs "causes the 'main quest' to disappear" according to Howard, who cites the "bleak scenario" of WOW as not being conducive to meaningful gameplay.

Given that challenge, the main portion of the book serves as a sort of lesson plan towards the creation of better, more meaningful quests in modern games. In Chapter 1, "Introduction to Quest Design," Howard asserts that designing meaningful action is key, and ample examples of symbolism and spiritual analogy tied to the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are offered. The following chapters each cover a different element of quest design, more or less aligned along the same breakdowns as one might find in a MUD codebase: w(or)ld, mob(ile), obj(ect) and the like. Each one is broken up into two sections: theory, and practice, the former covering Howard's thoughts on the topic, and the latter delving into practical examples of how to create that quest element using the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset.

Chapter 2 covers the "Spaces of the Quest," providing a sort of primer on level design and world design, from dungeons and labyrinths to dreamlike allegorical spaces. Chapter 3 then focuses on "Characters," both NPC and PC alike, including a discussion of encounters, dialog trees, archetypes and some minor venom spat Fable-wards due to the presence in that game of characters literally named Mentor and Hero; perhaps worth mentioning in Fable's defense is that both Hero (of Hero and Leander fame) and Mentor (Odysseus' sagacious friend) are both legitimate names derived from Greek myth. But I digress.

Chapter 4 explores "Objects," specifically those quest items that players seek out and gather on their quests. "[T]he drive to acquire objects in Everquest challenges literary understandings of games because players do not seek to interpret these objects," Wesp is quoted as saying here. The assumption seems to be that quests should strive to contain objects laden with meaning and symbolism, whether they be "rods of eight parts" that one must piece together or symbolic tattoos such as those found in Planescape: Torment. Certainly, many MMOs could learn a few lessons from this chapter, being as so many have players running around collecting feces, offal and skins. Indeed, the quests that send them off to do such things are explored in Chapter 5, "Challenges." Here Howard covers fetch/collect quests, kill quests, escort quests and the like, providing a somewhat awkward apology for kill quest proliferation by trying to compare kill grinding in games like WOW with the intense violence practiced by Odysseus. Of course, Odysseus was never sent on a quest to kill 12 Cyclopes to collect their eyes for a healing potion; once again, the difference between meaningful action and meaningful goals rears its ugly head. Indeed, Howard provides a somewhat telling example of an attempt to rectify this disparity in his scripting example, wherein he has King Arthur bestowing Gawain several keys to use on various chests so Gawain can open them in sequence to find objects hidden inside each which will help him on his quest. Surely there are examples of this sort of rote quest sequencing to be found in folklore and mythology; Russian mythology in particular is full of things done in threes. Yet one cannot help but feel that it makes the whole thing somewhat less epic in the retelling when a knight of the Round Table is reduced to playing puzzle games.

Chapter 6 of the book closes out the lesson plan with "Quests and Pedagogy," an example of how Howard used The Crying of Lot 49 with his own students to explore the nature of quests in a video game setting. This rather short chapter is followed by a Conclusion, summarizing what's come before, and then several lengthy Appendices: a guide to the Aurora Toolset; an excerpt from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and an excerpt from The Faerie Queene. An excellent Works Cited page (nearly as long as Chapter 6) and an adequate index close out the book. In total, the book weighs in at 248 pages, although 46 pages of that is introduction (15 more if you count Chapter 1) and over 80 pages is composed of conclusion, appendices and endmatter. Thus, about half of the book is either introduction or conclusion, frontmatter or endmatter, and this makes the book feel somewhat imbalanced, taking a long time to introduce and then back up the topic while spending not enough time (in my opinion) actually working through it. Howard's writing style is excellent and the subject matter worthy; I wish he had spent more time in his book's Act 2; perhaps he would have been able to extend his ideas even further than he does, striving not only to infuse quests with meaningful activity but with meaningful goals as well. Too much of game quest design is derived from the Latin origin of the word quest (which Howard tells us comes from questare, which means " to seek,") and not enough on the purpose of the quest, which is to have a heroic journey with a "Happily Ever After" at the end. Yet MMOs almost by definition require that many millions of players walk the exact same heroic path; would the epic tale of King Arthur be so epic if his round table had 10 million chairs, with ten million knights forever searching for their own copy of the Grail?

"Go and tell your master that we have been charged by God with a sacred quest," says King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "If he will give us food and shelter for the night, he can join us in our quest for the Holy Grail."

"Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he will be very keen," replies a French soldier. "Uh, he's already got one, you see."

Therein lies the problem: he's already got one, and so does everyone else. Because everyone has done the quest, and furthermore everyone wants to keep grinding for the +2 grail, which will no doubt be available in the next expansion, or perhaps in the Player's Handbook IV, or as an exclusive Dragon Magazine feature, available to subscribers of D&D Insider. Many (if not most) fantasy games can never have meaningful, magical quests where you get the vorpal sword and slay the Jabberwock and save the world, because their Sisyphean stories can never truly end; the Horde will always be at war with the Alliance, and the ring will never, ever make it to that volcano, and there will always be another supplement or sequel, another dungeon to raid, another hamlet of Hommlet to rescue. One telling Neverwinter Nights module is called Infinite Dungeons; the solitary hero has turned into the solitaire hero, ever grinding away. Sure, Odysseus had his wandering Odyssey as he searched for home, and Galahad took years to quest for the Holy Grail, but in each case they eventually found what they were looking for. Unfortunately, right now much of the game industry seems to generally be following the example of King Pellinore, endlessly pursuing his Questing Beast.

What Howard attempts to do with Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives is truly worthwhile, and I look forward to the dialog his book will inspire. He would have us re-examine the game quest in terms of the narrative quest, and apply those lessons to gaming. The book is well worth a read, both as a lesson plan for making the activity of questing more meaningful, as well as a first step towards giving games that rely heavily on quests — especially MMOS — more meaningful goals. If the game industry can pull that off, it will be an impressive feat, worthy of Sir Galahad himself. If not... well, there's always another 12 wolf pelts to collect.

You can purchase Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games chronicles the rise and fall of the Computer RPG industry, from Akalabeth to Zelda and everything in between. While the bulk of the book is devoted to the genre's 'Golden Age' in the late '80s and early '90s, author Matt Barton explores the entire history of CRPGs, from their origins in the mid '70s to the very recent past. While not entirely comprehensive, the book covers not only the major players and award-winners, but also dozens of obscure 'also-ran' as well as notable games in related genres." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing author Matt Barton pages 451 publisher A.K. Peters Ltd rating 7 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 978-1-56881-411-7 summary A detailed history of CRPGs Barton first defines the genre, insofar as one is able to do so, explaining that a CRPG generally includes elements such as: a system of statistics to track characters (ability scores and skills); the ability to advance characters via experience points; and randomized combat. Barton further attempts to define the genre by comparing CRPGs to what they are not, including JRPGs (Final Fantasy), MMORPGs (World of Warcraft), Adventure Games (Zork), and Strategy Games (Warcraft). A bit later, he explores the origins of the CRPG, listing Baseball Simulation Games (such as Strat-O-Matic), Tabletop wargames (Chainmail), Tolkien, Colossal Cave Adventure, and (of course) Dungeons & Dragons as having had an impact on the creation and evolution of the genre.

The next nine chapters of the book are devoted to the history of the CRPG, which Barton breaks down into six phases, somewhat akin to Hesiod's Five Ages.

The Dark Age covers the period of time from 1974 through the end of the decade, and includes PLATO and Mainframe games such as pedit, Dungeon, dnd and DND (not to be confused with each other, or with D&D or D&D), Oubliette, Moria, Avatar and Orthanc. Also included here, somewhat out of chronological order, are a discussion of Rogue and Rougelikes (Hack, Moria and Angband) and MUDs all the way through to 1989's TinyMUD. The Bronze Age of the CRPG begins in 1979 with the publication of Lord British's Akalabeth: World of Doom (which would go on to sell thousands of copies, making it the first commercially successful CRPG, if not exactly the first) and includes a host of obscure titles, including Wizards Castle, Eamon, Space and Empire, The Tarturian, Odyssey: The Complete Apventure, and Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai. In 1983, Bronze turns to Silver with the appearance of the Ultima and WIzardry trilogies, games which truly began to lay the groundwork for all that came after. Also mentioned in this chapter are less well-known games such as Sword of Fargoal, Dungeons of Daggorath, Tunnels of Doom, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and Universe.

The Golden Age dawns in 1985, bringing with it the refinement of prior ideas and the perfection of the genre's underlying systems. Barton divides coverage of this age into three chapters. The first covers the Early Golden Age, beginning with the console crash of 1983 and ending with the arrival of the NES in 1985. The CRPG market survived the crash rather unscathed, and in fact flourished thanks to games such as Phantasie, The Wizard's Crown, Ultima IV, and Autoduel. Most notable of all, of course, was 1985's The Bard's Tale, which spawned two sequels (three, if you count 2004's "spiritual sequel" starring Carey Elwes), both of which also receive some attention here.

It is here where the book's structure begins to drift a bit. By Barton's own admission, progress in the CRPG industry is "neither linear nor orderly," and in fact the attempt to align CRPG titles, trilogies and series along a single timeline almost necessarily breaks down. The Bard's Tale trilogy seems as if it would more properly be discussed in the next chapter (The Golden Age Part I). Instead, Barton calls it "The Dawn of the Golden Age" and places it about a third of the way into the "Early Golden Age" chapter, where it somewhat loses some of its impact. Further confusion surrounds the inclusion here of Might and Magic Book I: Secrets of the Inner Sanctum; published in 1986, it is not only followed by a discussion of Alternate Reality: The City (published in 1985), but is preceded by a lengthy discussion of several games which came after it, including The Magic Candle (1989) and Bloodstone (1993). While the author has thematic reasons for covering these games here, one wonders if a strict chronological order would have served better. Even Barton seems a bit off track when he invites the reader to "turn to the second half of the Golden Age," which runs from 1987 to 1993 (for those not keeping track, the first "half" only ran from 1983 to 1985). I don't mean to nitpick over throwaway segue lines, but in a book with a historical focus, the time-shifting is just a bit disconcerting.

Regardless, "The Golden Age Part I" covers the period of time that many consider to be the era of the CRPG, when companies like SSI, Origin, Interplay, and New World Computing dominated not just the CRPG industry, but the computer game industry as a whole. Ample coverage is justifiably given to SSI's Gold Box games, including Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, and Pools of Darkness. Somewhat curious (to me) is the omission here of any discussion of AD&D Second Edition, which was released in 1989 and officially introduced the concept of THAC0 (which appeared in Pool of Radiance). Other titles covered in this lengthy chapter include: SSI's Krynn trilogy and Savage Frontier games; the original Neverwinter Nights on AOL; Ultima V, VI and VII; Wizardry VI and VII; Might and Magic II, III and so on; Neuromancer; and Interplay's Wasteland.

The next chapter, "The Golden Age Part II," is devoted to JRPGs and groundbreaking CRPGs with real-time 3d graphics that appeared alongside the aforementioned CRPGs. Covered here in the JRPG category are games such as: The Legend of Zelda and its sequels; The Dragon Warrior series; Final Fantasy; Chrono Trigger; Super Mario RPG; and the Phantasy Star series. The chapter also covers Sierra On-Line's Quest for Glory series; the SSI Black Box games (including Eye of the Beholder); Dungeon Master ("the most successful Atari ST game ever released") and its many clones; and other notable genre-bending games including Beyond Zork and Star Saga.

Here again, we fall into a small hole in the timeline, for The Golden Age ends in 1993 and the next age doesn't begin until 1996. The chapter covering this black hole is called "The Bigger They Come," as if suggesting that Barton was unwilling to give a name to this second Dark Age of CRPGs. Here we see coverage of a variety of bad CRPGs, including Interplay's Descent to Undermountain, Ultima VIII and IX, and the Gothic series (which surely deserves more than the two paragraphs it gets). Covered in more depth is SSI's fall from grace following the publication of an assortment of sub-par D&D titles (including Spelljammer, Dark Sun, Al Qadim, and others) and the ensuing loss of their license with TSR. Some attention might have been paid to the "fall from grace" of TSR itself, which suffered financial ruin in the years that followed and was ultimately purchased by WOTC in 1997.

Ever the optimist, Barton instead moves rapidly into The Platinum Age, which covers the period of time from 1996 to 2001 and includes "the best CRPGs ever made." Covered here in some depth are games such as Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale and its sequel, Dungeon Siege, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, Might and Magic: The Mandate of Heaven, Dungeon Keeper, Arx Fatalis, Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series, Interplay's Fallout and Fallout 2, and Troika's Arcanum. The bulk of the chapter, however, is devoted to two games and their sequels: Blizzard's Diablo and Diablo II, which the author treats with noteworthy disdain, and Bioware's Baldur's Gate and its sequel, which Barton believes is "the best CRPG ever made."

While both games receive more or less equal time, it is a bit hard to swallow Barton's dislike for Diablo in the context of a historical overview; nowhere else does he editorialize quite so much, or so vividly. While at first he simply declares that Diablo's consideration as a CRPG "remains a divisive subject," he quickly moves on to less thinly-veiled potshots. At one point, he refers to "hordes of badly behaved teenagers (and middle-aged men, no doubt) scampering to Battle.net, 'pwning' each other and seeking out the latest cheats and hacks to gain an unfair advantage." Later, Barton expresses a "pang of regret over the overwhelming triumph of (the Diablo) series, since it seems to have come at the expense of the older, more sophisticated CRPGs of past eras." He insists that Baldur's Gate "offers much more strategy than Diablo," and argues that Baldur's Gate's multiplayer "helped the game compete against Diablo, whose Battle.net servers had become a swirling vortex for Daddy's money." I don't even know what that means — how can a free service be a vortex for money? The entire argument smacks of something one might find in a Penny Arcade comic strip, such as this one or this one. At the end of the book, Barton goes so far as to predict that "the real-time Diablo and Morrowind-style CRPGs that were so popular throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s seem fated to extinction, usurped by World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs." In the wake of all the buzz surrounding Diablo III's announcement in recent days, this prediction seems slightly premature.

Barton ends the book with a discussion of the Modern Age, "which we are in today." The chapter covers Neverwinter Nights and its sequel, as well as Vampire: The Masquerade and Bloodlines, and Knights of the old Republic and its sequel. After a mention of Fable, Oblivion, more Final Fantasies and Zeldas, and a discussion of why console-based CRPGs seem to be winning out, Barton closes out the book with a look at MMORPGS, from Meridian 59 through WOW and DDO (and every major title in between). He notes (quite properly, in my opinion) that an MMO like WOW has trouble handling a central story and plot as adeptly as a CRPG can, and points out several "emerging trends" concerning CRPGs, including the rise of online gaming, the tendency to announce the death of the standalone, single-player CRPG and — just because we can never have too many digs at Diablo — a mention of the increasing emphasis on action over strategy. "Whereas Ultima Online stressed role-playing, Diablo emphasized roll-playing," says Barton.

Of course, it is Barton's voice which makes the book entertaining; this is no dry history, but the enlightened point of view of a student of CRPGs, shared with the reader in a casual, accessible manner; in many ways, it is a bold manifesto in their defense. Says Barton: "CRPGs are not only the most fun and addictive type of computer game, but possibly the best learning tool ever designed." You may disagree with that, but you can never dispute the author's own dedication to that belief.

Despite the book's somewhat questionable chronological structuring (or, more correctly, its occasional deviations from that structure), the only major flaw worth noting is that the accompanying artwork is, to put it mildly, hideous. The original full-color screenshots look wonderful in Barton's Gamasutra column, but in the book they are mostly reprinted in muddy, blotchy black and white, making it impossible to determine what they depict even with the help of accompanying captions. The book does contain a color insert after page 208, but this 4-page, 8-picture centerpiece is at best forgettable — I flipped past it entirely while reading, and found that upon further review I hadn't missed anything by skipping over it.

Dungeons and Desktops is a mixed bag, somewhat akin to a sack full of Halloween candy. There are some genuinely good pieces of sweetness in there, as well as a great deal of hidden, forgotten gems and some bits you never knew existed. Despite a bit of a jumble towards the middle, taken as a whole the book is well worth picking up if you're a fan of CRPGs or fantasy games in general. Less die-hard fans might find themselves preferring to stick to Barton's Gamasutra columns, and Diablo fans might find themselves gritting their teeth at some points, but then every bag of candy's got a few pieces of black licorice in it, no?

You can purchase Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page."

Aeonite writes "Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing is the followup to Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, and the second book written by members of the Game Writers' Special Interest Group of the 14,000 member strong IGDA. The book covers much of the same terrain as its predecessor, but offers a tighter focus on some specific points, covering more technical (as in technique) details rather than broader narrative theory; if the first book was a Google Map, this one would be the Street View." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review. Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing author Wendy Despain (Editor) pages 250 publisher A.K. Peters Ltd rating 10 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 978-1-56881-416-2 summary A detailed look at professional video game writing techniques. Three authors from the first book — Richard Dansky, Rhianna Pratchett, and Andrew Walsh — also pen chapters here; they are joined by a dozen others, including three authors who helped edit the first book: Sande Chen, Wendy Despain, and Beth Dillon. In the interest of full disclosure, my own name appears beside a few quotes in this book; I am a member of the IGDA Writer's SIG, but I had no involvement in the writing or editing of the book itself.

When I reviewed Game Writing last year, my only reservations were that the book could have used some more specific examples from relevant games, and that it could have included a chapter on breaking into the field of game writing. It's nice to see that both of those issues have been addressed in this book. In fact, the latter issue is dealt with right where it should be — in chapter 1, "How to Break In and Stay In." Author Beth Dillon covers the importance of education, experience and a solid portfolio, but spends more time on the all-important notion of networking. Much of the chapter is also devoted to "how I did it" stories, which offer prospective writers a fairly good idea of the many ways in which one can get involved writing for games.

The next several chapters cover specific types of game writing documents and formats. Collectively they are in my opinion among the best in the book, even though they really can only touch the surface of the vast amount of documentation — internal and external — that goes along with the making of a game. As one might expect, the first of these — Chapter 2 — covers the broad issue of format in a discussion of "Interactive Script Formatting." Here, Author (and editor) Wendy Despain discusses the lack of a single script format, the standard screenplay format, the realities of using Microsoft Excel, branching narratives and the Neverwinter Nights Aurora Toolset. In the next chapter, Erin Hoffman offers a brief, concise discussion of the need for brief, concise pitch documents and executive summaries, two of the key documents found in the early stages of game design.

Chapter 4, by John Feil, then focuses on the types of Game Documentation that appear once game development has actually begun; he covers everything from versioning, wikis and source control, to the evolution of documents from pitch to treatment to game design document, as well as supplementary documents such as technical design docs and scripts. Feil also pens chapter 5, "Manuals, In-Game Text, and Credits", which has a fairly self-explanatory title. Worth noting in this chapter is the acceptance of some unpleasant realities of the industry, including the last-minute rush to get manuals done, the difficulties in working with various groups, and the fact that no one reads the manual anyway. Also mentioned is the issue of credits in the game industry — one of the primary reasons for manuals, and a constant thorn in the side of just about everyone who's ever made a game. The IGDA is working hard on a standard, and the book mentions their efforts, which can be followed on the IGDA website.

Several later chapters also cover specific types of documentation in some detail. Chapter 12, by Andrew Walsh, covers Tutorials, including issues of narrative models and the fact that tutorials are often added late in the development cycle. Chapter 13, by Alice Henderson, focuses on Strategy Guides, covering issues such as dealing with bugs, acquiring screenshots and maps, and dealing with drafts and deadlines.

In-between and elsewhere, the book also covers: the emerging industry of narrative design; the pros and cons of remote contracting versus working in a game studio; writing in a team; breaking writing up into "bite-sized chunks" to get the work done; writing for new intellectual property (versus existing IP); writing for different types of audiences; and working with voice actors in the recording studio. Some of these chapters drift a bit closer to ground already covered in the SIG's first book, but each does offer a degree of additional detail that readers will find helpful. Especially noteworthy is Richard Dansky's chapter on Script Doctoring, which offers a plethora of information and tips on how to do it well, along with plenty of exercises on how to practice your skills.

Dansky's piece is followed by Evan Skolnick's "Game Writing and Narrative in the Future," which looks at the direction the industry is going, and explores why writers are necessary, and how a theoretical game story system for future games might work (with a sideways glance at ELIZA and the Turing Test). After this final chapter, the book contains four appendices full of script samples, pitch documents, excerpts and other writing documents from games such as Bratz: Forever Diamondz, Pests, Food Finder and Call of Juarez. As is always the case when such gaming documents are presented, the lists of barks ("Great!" "Sweet" "Awesome!") are at once ridiculous and helpful to see in print, demonstrating quite a lot about the nature of game writing in their seeming redundancy.

Closing out the book is a list of author bios (there are 15, contributing to 16 chapters), including the likes of the aforementioned Richard Dansky (Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell), Chris Klug (Stargate Worlds, Earth & Beyond), Rhianna Pratchett (Heavenly Sword, Overlord), Anne Toole (The Witcher, Stargate Worlds) and Andrew Walsh (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). Notable is the fact that 7 out of the 15 authors are women; in a male-dominated industry, it would seem that in the realm of writing, at least, things are a bit more balanced.

In addition to being filled with useful information and tips, most of the chapters also feature one or more exercises at the end, providing readers (who are presumably also writers) with ways to test their skills in a practical manner using the techniques and theories discussed in each chapter. In some cases the Exercises are a bit lackluster and seem tacked on, but many are quite comprehensive and detailed; Dansky offers five such exercises which resemble nothing so much as a final exam from a college course on Script Doctoring. Alas, it seems doubtful that Professor Richard will be available to grade everyone 's work.

Professional Techniques is definitely a book by writers, for writers; even moreso than its predecessor. Insightful discussion of game writing issues is matched with many excellent examples and helpful exercises, and the whole piece is only very slightly marred by some odd chapter arrangement in the middle of the book. This arrangement places Chapter 5's coverage of Manuals and In-Game Help and Chapter 12's discussion of Tutorials further apart than seems logical, especially considering the wide range of topics covered in-between. However, this is truly nit-picking, and overall the book deserves top marks. Stylistically and informatively, it's at least on par with its elder cousin, and will serve as an excellent addition to the library of any game writer — current, or prospective. I highly recommend it.

You can purchase Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews — to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page."

Aeonite writes "As we all learned in English class, there are three points of view one can employ when writing: first person ("I learned"), second person ("You learned"), and third person ("He learned"). You are about to read a review of Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, a book that addresses the use of second-person narration in games and related media. You are also likely to be eaten by a Grue." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media author Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Editors) pages 426 publisher MIT Press rating 9 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 0262083566 summary An exploration of the "You" in RPGs and Interactive Fiction As Wikipedia helpfully points out, the second-person POV is not common in literary fiction, but it is fairly common in other forms of media, including the subject of this book; namely, interactive fiction (IF), role-playing games (RPGs) and other game-related fictions where the "reader" is generally an active participant in the story, either literally or virtually.

To that end, co-editors Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin have collected 47 essays on various topics related to the second-person, dividing the lot up into three sections covering "Tabletop Systems," "Computational Fictions," and "Real Worlds" (the latter somewhat of a misnomer, as you will soon see). The essays range in tone from highly informal to quite technical, from practical to theoretical, and (in the tradition of old Infocom games) from terse to verbose, the sole uniting theme being the focus on You.

Section One, "Tabletop Systems," contains 15 essays devoted to a discussion of traditional, old-school RPGs, including standout bits penned by the likes of Greg Costikyan, George R. R. Martin, Erik Mona and Ken Hite. It's the most accessible part of the book, and without a doubt my favorite.

Costikyan's "Games, Storytelling, and Breaking the String," starts out with a discussion of the early days of the pen-and-paper industry and their influence on interactive fiction, and moves all the way to MMOs and the current indie RPG movement, spending some time on Paul Czege's My Life with Master. It provides a good overview of the IF industry in its entirety, and might have fit better as a sort of "meta-essay", but still works here as a good introduction and exploration of many of the issues surrounding game narrative, player freedom and IF in general.

Erik Mona and Ken Hite's pieces are more on target. Mona's "From the Basement to the Basic Set: The Early Years of Dungeons & Dragons takes D&D up to the late 70s just before it split into D&D and AD&D, providing an interesting historical perspective on the Gygax-Arneson years. Hite's "Narrative Structure and Creative Tension in Call of Cthulhu talks about the evolution of language within various editions of the CoC RPG, as well as the standardized form of their adventures, and how these things serve to create a narrative tension that has helped the game survive and prosper.

One essay worth mentioning for its terseness is Jonathan Tweet's essay on character creation in Everway, barely managing two pages, and then only by the addition of four pieces of artwork. Another oddity is Rebecca Borgstrom's "Structure and Meaning in Role-Playing Game Design", which addresses Exalted's story structure; the piece is filled with numerous subheadings and language that occasionally makes it read like an outline or a proposal, rather than a finished piece (e.g., repeated references to "this chapter" such as "This chapter views gaming as a computational process."). Both pieces are written well and cover interesting material, but feel unfinished in their own ways.

Other essays in this first section discuss the World of Darkness and the Storyteller system, storytelling and collectible card games (in particular, A Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu), Arkham Horror, Mystery of the Abbey, George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards books, and the gamebook On Life's Lottery. Not discussed, and notable by their absence: Steve Jackson Games, and any edition of Dungeons & Dragons after 1980.

Section Two, "Computational Fictions," is comprised of 17 essays by authors including Jordan Mechner, Chris Crawford, Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. The material here is somewhat denser and more technical, but aside from some linguistic stumbling blocks it's also filled with excellent insights.

Mechner's essay on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time opens things up with an excellent look at the making of a video game: rules, some broken; discussion of how dialogue works within the context of a game; even a sample from a dialogue spreadsheet that shows why screenplay format is inappropriate.

Somewhat crunchier are essays by Chris Crawford ("Deikto: A Language for Interactive Storytelling") and D. Fox Harrell ("GRIOT's Tales of Haints and Seraphs: A Computational Narrative Generation System"). The former discusses Crawford's early attempt to draft something akin to a programming language for IF, complete with flowchart diagrams and pidgin-sounding syntax, such as "Mom command Billy that Billy not go to lake." Harrell's essay likewise talks about "developing computational techniques for representing an author's intended subjective meaning and expression." Yikes.

The longest piece, "Writing Facade: A Case in Procedural Authorship" by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, discusses Facade, a game wherein the player can either break up or save the marriage of a digital couple. Ample screenshots and samples from the game accompany an explanation of the situation as it unfolds, with later discussion of the procedural architecture and subsystems behind the game. It's an excellent piece that nicely ties together what a player sees with what a developer has to deal with.

Aside from the generally less accessible language, the section's only major flaws are that the essays from Steve Meretzky (on Floyd from Planetfall) and Lee Sheldon (on the computer adaptation of And Then There Were None) are rather terse considering the rich subject matter. Surely Floyd and Agatha Christie deserve more than a couple of pages a piece.

Other games discussed in this section include the Flash storytelling game Solitaire, Book and Volume, Shade, Savior-Faire, the somewhat surreal art piece Pax, the hypermedia Magritte-esque work The Brotherhood of Bent Billiard, the cinematic Mission to Earth, the audiovisual hypertext Juvenate, Twelve Easy Lessons to Better Time Travel, The Breakup Conversation and the multiplayer IF The Archer's Flight.

The third and penultimate section, "Real Worlds", focuses on shared, IF experiences, the unifying factor being a persistence that runs counter to the transience experienced in both weekly RPG sessions and most computer games. Despite the section title, virtual worlds and MMOs are also discussed here by the likes of essayists including John Tynes, Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca. For the most part the material is engaging and interesting, if a bit esoteric at times.

John Tynes' "Prismatic Play: Games as Windows on the Real World" explores escapism and engagism in games as diverse as D&D, Millennium's End and his own Unknown Armies, concluding that engagist works are those that expand our knowledge through immersion in real world ideas and cultures as opposed to escapist frolicking in EDO (Elf-Dwarf-Orc) fantasy games. As an interesting not-quite-counterpoint, Sean Thorne covers John Tynes' Puppetland in the next essay, and discusses how he incorporated the rather escapist game into a writing curriculum for his eleven-year-old students.

Ian Bogost and Gonzalo Frasca include an essay titled "Video Games Go to Washington: The Story Behind the Howard Dean for Iowa Game," which is about as self-explanatory as a title gets. The duo discuss the launch of the game in December of 2003, development challenges and time constraints, demographics and politics, and provide an excellent post-mortem on the game and its effects (or lack thereof) on Dean's campaign.

Several chapters in a row delve into fantasy MMOs, including World of Warcraft. Torill Elvira Mortensen's "Me, the Other" talks about role-playing in MMOs, the difference between IC and OOC and the controversy of role-playing (which seems somewhat anachronistic; aren't people more worried about GTA than D&D nowadays?). Jill Walker's essay covers Quests in World of Warcraft, and how they introduce and support the overall storyline. Celia Pierce and her alter-ego Artmesia discuss(es) social identity and persistence in exploring the case of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, an MMO that, when it shut down, caused its player base to propagate to other MMOs such as Second Life and There to keep the community alive.

The one odd bit here is a chapter on Santaman's Harvest by Adrine Jenik, an exploration of a digital performance piece from Desktop Theater that includes more sidebar than text as it reprints dialogue from the play ("sman:: Think Big; farmer #1: Big?").

Other essays discuss the use of role-play in prepping political canvassers, Nick Fortgno's A Measure for Marriage LARP, the evidently crass unexceptional.net ("Guy playing with himself," reads a part of one caption), the Boston-based Itinerant, the I Love Bees ARG, the basic rules of Improv Theater, the interactive play Adventures in Mating, and the collaborative work Eliza Redux, "an interactive telerobotic work couched in a virtual graphical representation of a psychoanalyst's workplace" as well as a revisitation of the Eliza program.

The book's rather sizable Appendix includes three playable tabletop RPGs: Puppetland by John Tynes, wherein players take the roles of puppets; Bestial Acts by Greg Costikyan, which is based on the dramatic theories and aesthetic of Bertolt Brecht; and The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen by James Wallis, a tale-telling game written from the first person perspective of the Baron himself. This is followed by biographies of the contributing authors and a helpful index, always a good thing to see in a book of this size and density.

As is often the case, the book's back cover copy is at best misleading; though terse, it manages inaccuracy in saying that the book features "three complete tabletop role-playing games." However, Costikyan's "Designer's Note" for Bestial Acts on page 357 explicitly says "I've never bothered to finish writing up acts II and III." Not quite complete, then. The same error is reprinted on the front flap; a minor gaffe, but noticeable in a book with few other notable flaws save a few silly typos in obvious charts and tables: "Challange" instead of "Challenge", "real-rime" instead of "real-time." But this is nitpicking. As a whole the book is well-edited, well-laid out and amply illustrated to boot, with over 200 images; would that they were in color.

My only real complaint is not with anything in the book, but with the underlying assumption — prevalent in many places, touched upon here in the jacket copy, and assumed to some degree in many of the essays — that the gaming industry is still an "emerging field" that needs to prove its own maturity. While it might be true that not much in the way of academic discussion exists when it comes to games, it still seems all too comfortable to continue hiding in the soft golden field of "emerging." How much longer can the industry (of which I consider myself a part) continue to use that word?

Consider television in the '50s after it got through its own period of emergence and acceptance: shows like Candid Camera, Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and Break the Bank were on the air. And 60 years later, what do we have? Shows like America's Funniest Home Videos, American Idol and Deal or No Deal. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Pick any medium and you'll find much the same — for every Citizen Kane there will be a dozen Scary Movies; for every Empire Falls there will be fifty Da Vinci Codes.

Pong was emerging; Zork was emerging. We are no longer emerging — we have emerged. Sure, we have quests in World of Warcraft where you have to collect poop, but we also have Portal; we have the Hot Coffee mod in GTA: San Andreas, but we also have a Dystopian Objectivist narrative in Bioshock.

The 47 essays and 3 games in this excellent book show us where we've been, where we are, and where we're headed when it comes to role-playing games and interactive fiction. That's 50 pieces of evidence to prove the case that gaming is as deserving of attention, acclaim and criticism as any other medium. As an industry, we've been emerging for 35 years now; by my reckoning, that puts us squarely into adulthood. Let's start acting like it.

You can purchase Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "Let there be no doubt — Douglas Wolk loves comics, and his is a tough love, the sort of love that leaves comics out in the rain pounding on the door because they snuck out after curfew again and wrecked the car. I've never dived deep enough into the industry to form a strong opinion of it one way or the other, but Wolk is both a fan and a critic of comic books, and his insights make Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean an interesting, engaging read, both because of and in spite of his enthusiasm." Read below for the rest of Michael's review. Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean author Douglas Wolk pages 405 publisher Da Capo Press rating 7 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 9780306815096 summary A critical, often insightful look at graphic novels and how to read them

Reading Comics is billed by its publisher as "the first serious, readable, provocative, canon-smashing book of comics theory and criticism by the leading critic in the field." At the very least this is somewhat pretentious and misleading, insofar as it would seem to imply that all previous attempts at comics theory were apparently written by clowns; Will Eisner and Scott McCloud would no doubt take some minor umbrage at that assertion. This is not to say that Wolk's credentials are in question; he's written extensively for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Salon.com and other publications on the subject of comics. To see Wolk's thoughts coalesced into book form is a welcome sight, because this is how I tend to enjoy media: in large chunks rather than in installments, be it a graphic novel collection of Transmetropolitan, or an entire season of Buffy on DVD.

Reading Comics is broken into two-parts, with the first third of the book given over to an exploration of comic book history and theory, and the remainder consisting of a series of essays about specific comic book authors, artists and titles. The title of the book is accurate enough, since it does serve not only as a general guide to how to read comics, but as a chronicle of how Douglas Wolk reads them. The subtitle, however, is at best misleading; the book doesn't really offer a definitive answer to the questions posed, nor can it. Rather, this is a book about how Douglas Wolk thinks graphic novels work, and what specific examples of graphic novels mean to him.

All of this might seem to go without saying, but it's important to recognize that Wolk's voice is quite omnipresent throughout the book. This is especially true in the second part, where Wolk's essays deconstruct and interpret a series of comics through his eyes, but is also a factor in the book's earlier pages as Wolk offers his blunt and honest opinion of the state of the industry. This first part of the book — divided into five chapters — is devoted to "Comic Book Theory and History". Herein, Wolk attempts to first define comic books, and then to lay out a theory for how one might interpret and critique them using what Wolk dubs "harsh criticism."

Chapter 1, "What Comics Are and What They Aren't", briefly explores the progression of comics from their original golden age, through the silver age and the origin of the Comics Code, and into the current modern era of comic books spawned, it seems, in 1986 with the publication of titles such as The Dark Knight Returns, Maus: A Survivor's Tale, and Watchmen. Wolk declares this current age the real golden age — aesthetically, financially and commercially — and spends the remainder of the chapter more or less trying to support that assertion by definition, comparison to other media, and an extensive straw man argument that includes a few slapshots toward Scott McCloud's side of the ice.

Wolk doesn't pull punches in Chapter 2 either, where he discusses "Auteurs, the History of Art Comics, and How to Look at Ugly Drawings". In discussing style, content, expressiveness and plot he (perhaps deservedly) lambastes Liefeld ("a god-awful hack with no tonal range at all, and his flailing attempts at storytelling are inevitably derailed by his inability to think beyond the next dramatic full-page shot") and even takes aim at Jack Kirby, whose "final years were an embarrassing mess" according to Wolk.

"What's Good About Bad Comics and What's Bad About Good Comics" is the subject of Chapter 3, which sees Wolk first trying to sort out differences between comics, comic books, periodicals and graphic novels by comparing the argument to the difference between movies, films and cinema; this is to say, it's mostly semantics. Wolk also explores the culture of comics and the problems associated with it (bandwagoneers, nostalgia, sexism), and comes to the conclusion that he loves comics "because comic books are awesome," providing seven pages of personal "favorite" moments from the history of comics. Enlightening, but only as a window into Wolk's closet, rather than a vision of any universal truth.

Chapter 4, "Superheroes and Superreaders", attempts to answer the question of why Superhero comics have formed the baseline from which all other comic books seem to stem, but while it touches on the underlying themes and allegories involved I was left thinking that better (or at least more interesting) explanations and explorations have been provided elsewhere, as in Shyamalan's Unbreakable and Chaban's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

The final chapter of part 1, "Pictures, Words and the Space Between Them", explores the notion of what cartooning is and how it works, the difference between drawing and cartooning (static images vs implied action), and the importance of white space and gutters in conveying time. And what conclusions, if any, can be drawn at the end of part 1? Says Wolk: "McCloud likes to make categories; I like to make generalizations and excuses."

It is on that note that we enter the second part of the book, "Reviews and Commentary", a collection of 18 mini-reviews and essays about selected titles and authors, chosen for no reason other than that Wolk thought they were interesting to discuss. They are not presented as a recommended reading list, nor are they intended to be representative or comprehensive, nor are they presented in any logical order, such as alphabetically by title or last name. At first I thought that they were progressing in order of complexity (that is, complexity of the comic titles being discussed), but even this apparent structure falls apart towards the end, especially when one realizes that ranking comic titles by complexity is entirely subjective.

Books and artists covered in these essays include both well-known authors (Will Eisner and Frank Miller, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison) and titles (Sin City, Daredevil, Watchmen, Maus) as well as more obscure names, including David B (Epileptic), Chester Brown (The Little Man) and Carla Speed McNeil (The Finder).

Each one of the essays (several of which are reprinted from Salon.com) lays out Wolk's feelings about the works and the authors discussed, including both praise and criticism — ofttimes in the same paragraph. Most of the essays are accompanied by ample art that is relevant to the topic being discussed, but there are some cases where an essay is a bit art-light, which is annoying and somewhat maddening in a book about comic books — in particular, the essay on David B. doesn't have any artwork at all, and the essay on Chris Ware could benefit from a little more Jimmy Corigan or Final Report. Also somewhat questionable is the grouping of some subjects within or between essays; Will Eisner and Frank Miller are relegated to one chapter, while two successive chapters are given to Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez of Love & Rockets fame. I'm sure Wolk had his reasons of course, but as a reader the structure seems a bit random.

The book's Afterward gives some brief mention of online comic strips (including Diesel Sweeties and Little Dee), as well as newer anthologies and artists, and then concludes with Wolk's assertion that while there's not much further for comics to go as a medium, that's ultimately a good thing since it represents maturity. Assertions like this are hard to argue with, which is both a blessing and a curse for Reading Comics. So much of what's within is phrased as opinion and generalization that ultimately the book reads something like a memoir, more of a peek into Wolk's basement than into the history of comics.

To Wolk, comics appear to be a sort of ugly girlfriend. He seems to appreciate the cheerleader superhero types, but he's much more into the chicks with tattoos, the Suicide Girls and American Apparel ads of the comic book industry, the ones that stem from "a conscious choice to incorporate a lot of distortion and avoid conventional prettiness in style." He loves them for what's inside, for their intelligence and depth, and acknowledges their surface flaws, never hesitating to refer to them as ugly. It makes one wonder; if a graphic novel asks you if they look fat, do you say yes?

You can purchase Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "As a content writer I was not heavily involved in the level design process at my last game industry job, but Phil Co's Level design For Games: Creating Compelling Game Experiences accompanied me to work every day. Not only is it a good introduction to the world of level design, but it also provides an excellent overview of the entire game design process." Read below for the rest of Michael's thoughts on this book. Level Design For Games: Creating Compelling Game Experiences author Phil Co pages 352 publisher New Riders rating 10 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 0321375971 summary An excellent introduction to the art of game level design In the past I've been rather verbose when reviewing books about game design, as I wished to provide evidence that justified the often less than stellar score I gave the book in question. I'm pleased that I don't have to do that with this book, which as far as I can tell is a nearly flawless introduction to level design. As such, this review will be more of a recap, so as to help you decide if the book's content is right for you.

Chapter 1, "How Do You Make a Game?," discusses the game development process from Pre-Production through Gold Master by way of showing how level design fits into the overall scheme of things. Also discussed are design documents, basic level geometry, and the difference between alpha and beta, and A, B, C and D bugs (A being "fix this now" and D being "nice to have, maybe later").

Chapter 2, "Defining the Game," focuses on the various types of games on the market and the differences between them, from first-person shooters to platformers, action RPGs to MMORPGs. Also discussed in some depth are themes (fantasy, sci-fi), ESRB ratings and audience age, and system limitations.

Chapter 3, "Enemies and Obstacles: Choosing Your Challenges," is where the book really begins to get into the nitty-gritty of the level design process. This third chapter covers the placement of enemies ("mobs") and objects within the level, the types of levels (hubs, boss levels, etc.), skill trees and the application of skills to obstacles within each level.

With an idea of what needs to go where, Chapter 4, "Brainstorming Your Level Ideas," delves into the creation of concept sketches and reference images, the creation of a level's storyline, the drafting of a level description and the design of the puzzles and scripted sequences within the level (which incorporate the mobs and objects discussed previously).

Chapter 5, "Designing With a Diagram," is where all those ideas and brainstorming begin to take concrete shape. A primary concern here is the scope and order of levels within the game, particularly in terms of a player's progress through each level. Once you know where your level fits into the overall schema, the author tells you to lay it out in diagram format by creating a grid; this is not unlike a Dungeon Master carving out 10' by 10' dungeon corridors on graph paper for a D&D game. You know who you are.

Chapter 6, "The Template," introduces the reader to UnrealEd, a level editor for which a demo is provided in the back of the book. The author walks through the basics of using UnrealEd, from the basic creation of a room and the placement of an NPC within it to slightly more advanced topics such as vertex editing and static meshes. It's a fairly technical chapter, but is laid out clearly with numbered instructions and plenty of screenshots to guide the reader along.

Chapter 7, "Improving Your Level," jumps ahead in time a bit, assuming that you've already mastered the basics from Chapter 6 and have created a level template that can now be play-tested. It focuses mostly on that play-testing process and how to adjust and balance one's level based on feedback in order to make it fun and functional.

The next chapter, "Taking It to 11," is more concerned with polish and quality. Topics include architectural style, the addition of details like trim and borders, the appropriate use of textures and props, and the like. The second third of the chapter takes the reader back into UnrealEd to practice some of these skills, including the creation of new shapes and a radial building technique to create curved hallways an rounded rooms. Finally, the chapter discusses the addition of other game elements, including scripted sequences, ambient sounds and music, and other special effects such as fog.

The final chapter, "Ship It!," revisits the concept of Alpha, Beta and Gold Master in more depth, discussing optimization, the creation of zones (with an UnrealEd tutorial to help the reader along), game balance, and bug testing. It closes off with some discussion of helpful skills and practices one might pick up, including how to file a good bug, why you should archive data, and how to take good screenshots.

On the subject of screenshots, it is worth noting here that the book contains one such shot from Flagship Studio's Hellgate: London, a game which I am downloading from the EA store as I write this review, and which is scheduled for official release on Halloween, 2007. In my experience, many books on game design tend to incorporate screenshots and examples from older games, and it's rare to find a book that includes a screenshot from a game that is not only current, but as of the book's publication was yet unreleased. Indeed, most of the examples in the book are of games released in the past several years (Psychonauts, Half-Life 2, Doom 3), and this gives the book added relevance, appeal and longevity.

Aside from the more technical language involved with the UnrealEd tutorials, the book's clear language and friendly tone makes it quite accessible, even for those not of a technical persuasion. While I can't speak to how much the book would help a more experienced LD, it definitely seems appropriate for a beginner who's eager to learn the craft, or anyone interested in the game industry as a whole. I highly recommend it.

You can purchase Level Design For Games: Creating Compelling Game Experiences from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "According to the Introduction, Character Design For Mobile Devices is 'the first book on the designs, the technologies, the issues, and the techniques behind character design for mobile devices and games.' Unfortunately, what could have been an interesting and unique coffee table book suffers from an unclear message, poor design, bad editing, and an authorial voice that is rather too present at times, and too oblique at others." Read below for the rest of Aeonite's review. Character Design for Mobile Devices author Nfgman, Lawrence Wright pages 192 publisher Elsevier Science & Technology Books rating 6/10 reviewer Aeonite ISBN 0240808088 summary A book for truly die-hard and extremely nostalgic fans of pixel art

The title of the book can be read in at least two different ways. First, it could refer to character design from the perspective of the fan, as in "I will read ABOUT the design of these characters." Secondly, it could refer to character design from the perspective of a prospective student: "I will learn HOW to design characters." While this book occasionally dips its toe in the latter waters, the technical tidbits are not plentiful enough to warrant the book being sold as a "How To" guide to character design. The ambiguousness of the title might be overlooked if it was not coupled with a misleading back cover blurb, apparently written by someone who didn't read the book. "Learn to design vibrant, identifiable graphics and recognizable characters with only a few pixels at your disposal!" boasts the first line on the back cover. You will not learn any such thing from this book. This is not in any way a guide on how to design pixel art. It is a coffee table book about pixel art, and it must be reviewed in this light.

After briefly covering introductory topics like "What is a pixel?," the book quickly moves into the much meatier Chapter 2, which covers the "History of Portable Devices." Often repetitive (e.g., the same information about Nintendo's Game & Watch appears several times), it is nevertheless a pretty good overview, covering everything from the aforementioned Game and Watch and Microvision to the current generation of portables and everything in between (e.g., NeoGeo pocket, Atari Lynx, Wonder Swan), including a two-page spread about some Lego-like Pixel Toys.

Chapter 3, "Changing Hardware," is not so much about hardware changes (Chapter 2 covered that), but about the impact of changing hardware on what designers are able to achieve. The first few pages cover cellular phone games, and how they differ from consoles (vertical orientation, color and memory sizes), but the discussion seems unnecessarily (and somewhat archaically) tilted in favor of ye olde CRT monitors, only at the very end reversing course and saying that "The little LCD is tried, true, and able to keep up..." Pages 58-59 are probably the crunchiest in the book — covering graphics tools such as Graphics Gale, Corel Paintshop Pro, and Grofx2 — but the information is unfortunately less than clear. The author states that "Photoshop... is inappropriate for pixel art" but then two sentences later points out that "Photoshop is nearly ubiquitous and very popular with pixelers." How can this truly be the case?

The chapter then changes gears to present a series of Artist Foci, which are less focused than one might think. The first piece on Henk Nieborg mentions that 'His next game was Lionheart, which sold well considering its platform...' but we are not told what platform. Later, the author says of another game that '..the final effect is almost reminiscent of Metal Slug.' And what is Metal Slug? We're not told here. Fewer problems appear in the Army of Trolls Focus, aside from the underlying problem that this is a book about mobile devices, and Army of Trolls don't design for mobile devices; they work on "pixel art."

One of the quotes in this section is quite telling when you consider the back cover's claim that this book will help you "Learn to design": 'If I am working on a cityscape, I'll copy and paste buildings into the image and mess around with them in Photoshop layers until I am pleased with the layout.' Somehow this is less than enlightening, although it's still much more so than this Zenlike piece of insight from the Chris Hildebrand Focus that says nothing about anything: 'Chris has a broad range of skills and methods that have allowed him to produce an incredible range of graphics in many styles. He works with whatever speeds his methods require, creating pixel graphics from a number of sources using various techniques.'

Chapter 4, covering "Mobile Developers," mingles the author's own words with quotes from others in the "pixel art industry," and it's often confusing who's saying what until you get to the end of a paragraph and find someone's name in bold. Sometimes there are multiple quotes from the same person (as with Charles Barnard) but rather than being arranged in any particular order — like, say, alphabetically, or by subject matter — they are just dropped into the text seemingly at random. The material here is interesting and often insightful, but even when the book is at its best, it's stumbling; page 98 contains a "How To" from Capybara's Nathan Vella and Anthony Chan, but the name in the chapter title is misspelled numerous times as "Cabybara." Later, in a discussion with Sato Takayoshi, "palette" is misspelled as "pallet" numerous times; forgivable elsewhere, but not in a book about design.

In Chapter 5, titled "Genre/pixel Histories," the book devotes some twenty-five pages to an exploration of RPGs, Fighting Games, and Platformers, and the remainder of the chapter to "Sprite histories" of characters like Mario, Sonic and Bonk. This is all fascinating stuff, and in many ways this is the most interesting part of the book, but the problem is that this is a book called Character Design for Mobile Devices, and nothing in this chapter has anything to do with handheld gaming aside from a few sentences that vaguely hint that it's 'only a matter of time' before a good mobile RPG game is created, and that such a game 'could be impressive indeed.'

Despite the fact that it's interesting and engaging, the content is not without flaw. Page 147 spends an entire paragraph discussing Konami's 'first modern fighting game' but the author fails to mention it by name at any point. This is followed on page 148 by a mention of "Garou: Mark of the Wolves" and its 'visually incredibly evolution,' but there are no pictures of it or further discussion. The next page mentions 'a short-lived fighting game that never disappointed in any category, especially the visuals,' but your guess is as good as mine as to what game that was. A few pages later, the author discusses three characters from SNK fighting games without mentioning what games they're from.

The Sprite histories are often just as confusing. The evolution of Mario contains a cascade of images, some of which are not clearly labeled — page 160 shows six sprites and four captions; page 162 shows eleven sprites and only one vague caption. The histories of Donkey Kong and Castlevania are a little clearer, but confusion returns with the Sonic, Arthur (of Ghouls 'n' Ghosts fame), and Bonk histories, with the latter at one point referencing the image that is 'second last on the column below' on a page with three rows of images, the first two in four columns and the last one in six columns.

It's worth noting that this problem with captioning occurs elsewhere in the book, too:Page 15 has twelve images in six rows but zero captions. Page 23 has three images and two captions. Image 1 is of the TurboGrafx 16 and is so labeled. Image 2 is of the Turbo Express and is unlabeled. Image 3 is a close-up of the TurboGrafx 16 clearly showing the logo of the TurboGrafx 16; it is labeled "Turbo Express". Page 33 has seven images and three captions but two of the images are labeled with the number 1. Page 43 has fifteen images and five captions but only the first five images are labeled. Page 118 has screenshots from two different game platform versions of Sonic the Hedgehog, and two captions both labeled Sonic the Hedgehog, with no indication of which is which.

It is, frankly, a mess.

As with the title of the book, "a mess" can be read in two different ways: as a synonym for "a lot," or as a reference to clutter. In this case, it refers to both, which is to say that this book contains a whole lot of pictures, and they're very messy. Were this a book about HOW to design characters, poor design decisions would be less important than the content, but for this type of book it matters a great deal, as the design and the content go hand in hand: only 25% of each page (on average) contains words.

The nineteen images on the cover seem haphazardly and randomly chosen, including fifteen pieces of random pixel characters, three shots of miscellaneous handheld devices, and one icon which simply reads "Character Design Library." Described in this way it's a bit difficult to get across exactly why this is a bad idea, so perhaps an analogy is in order. Imagine a book about American History, with a front cover consisting of fifteen images of Presidents, three pictures of sailing ships, and a photo of a Stop Sign. Random, much?

Between the covers, the design is also a scattershot affair. The book's chapters are color coded (Pink, Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange, in that order), with color coordinated boxes at the bottom of each page which sporadically mirror the topic. In the second chapter, the chapter title consistently appears in the box on the left hand page, but in the third chapter the title only appears maybe half the time, with the page subtopic sometimes appearing instead, or even the title of the second chapter. In addition, these colorful boxes skitter wildly across the page, sometimes flush left, sometimes centered, but mostly just sprinkled hither and yon.

As one might expect in a book about pixel art, the pages are filled with screenshots and other bits of artwork, but unfortunately many of these are oddly chosen or placed. In places, paragraphs describing a particular product go on and on, but the photos that should accompany them are one or two pages away. For example, on a two-page spread that discusses the Nintendo Gameboy are a large photo of a PlayStation Portable and a Nintendo DS. This occurs again a few pages later, where GameBoy Advance and the PSP are pictured on a two-page spread that covers the GameBoy, GameGear, Genesis and TurboGrafx. Later, more of the same: a discussion of Final Fantasy is graced with images from Dragon Warrior; a paragraph about Karate Champ is accompanied by a shot from Street Fighter; and a page about Super Mario Bros has screencaps from Super Mario World.

Much of the artwork also seems randomly chosen, rather than illustrative of a particular topic, or even indicative of a game's main characters or features. Page 86 contains three images from an unnamed "Military Game," two of which show the same empty warehouse (or possibly the back stockroom at a McDonald's). An artist focus on Chris Hildebrand contains numerous references to his most successful release, Heli Attack 3, yet not one image from this game appears in the six pages devoted to him; instead, two pages show us generic landscapes called "Mangrove Swamp image," "Waterfall image" and "Tropical image." The cream of the crop is page 128, which contains the following note: 'The Super Nintendo Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (left) was a visual marvel when it was released, with colors so lush and vibrant they rivaled arcade games at the time.' The stunning "image on the left" is the game's title screen.

Every graphical sin is committed somewhere in the book. Numerous pages (particularly in Chapter 2) suffer from "random cropping," where large images are cropped square with no attention to what's being cropped out; in one instance, a discussion of the Turbo Express contains an unhelpful close-up of the Select and Run buttons. Page 82 and 92 contain duplicate artwork, and the latter also contains a horribly oversized pixelated pirate that serves no purpose but to look ugly and fill space. Page 94 features the infamous "marketing image masquerading as screenshot," notable here because this is a book about pixel art, and this is not a piece of pixel art.

The book ends abruptly, sans conclusion, before diving into a Glossary full of unnecessary editorializing to put Wikipedia to shame. The entry on "2D" refers to them as 'often more vibrant than 3D,' and 'pure and fun,' whereas the entry on "3D" refers to how 3D games 'killed off pixel art,' 'require an incredible increase in computing power,' and how 'many older players blame the rise of 3D games and a new push for realism over style, and accuracy over creativity, for ruining games.' Is this a glossary, or a pulpit? It seems we are to believe that 2D gaming seems to represent elegant perfection, and 3D gaming represents all that is wrong with the world.

The book's introduction opens with a statement that 'this book is a tribute to 2D gaming graphics and portable game graphics.' Why the word "Design" is in the title, and "Tribute" is not, I don't know. There's nothing wrong with publishing a tribute to days gone by. 'There will hopefully always be a place for a simpler style of art on cellphones due to the small screen resolution and limited palettes', says Henrik Pettersson on page 86, before adding 'If you're looking for a lifelong career within visual arts, I wouldn't recommend pixel art as your only skill.' Not that Pettersson's point of view is the only one; Gary Lucken of Army of Trolls insists on page 65 that 'pixel art is a viable career move again for budding artists.'

So which is it? This author seems to imply that the latter is true. 'Looking forward isn't always the best way to advance an art form,' he says, adding that 'the pixel is not seen as primitive, but rather as a way to express a simple artistic elegance rarely seen in today's complex jumbled gaming landscape.' However, it's worth noting that one of the tutorials in the book is Ian McPherson's guide to designing games for the PC Engine system, a defunct console that hasn't seen an official game release in nearly a decade.

In this light, my earlier comparison to American History is worth coming back to. Character Design for Mobile Devices could (and perhaps should) have been an excellent history book, a nostalgic tour of days gone by. Instead, it doesn't quite know which hat to wear, combining tangential discussions on console gaming, conflicting "How-To" advice from pixel artists, and repeated pro-pixel commentary from the author which is akin to wishing for another Boston Tea Party, just because it was kind of cool the first time.

The book is far from a "Jumbled-Up Piece of Crap" (to use a term mentioned on page 88), but it would definitely benefit from a "new and improved" second edition that cleaned up its many problems. With more appropriately chosen art, more consistent captioning, and a clearer message, it would find appeal with a broader audience. As it stands though, the book really only has appeal for truly die-hard (and extremely nostalgic) fans of pixel art, those thirtysomethings who own Atari 2600 T-shirts and have Ms. Pac-Man cabinets in their basements. You know who you are.

You can purchase Character Design for Mobile Devices from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "Billed as the 'first complete guide to writing for games', Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames provides an excellent overview of the ins-and-outs of writing for the videogame industry. As might be expected from a publication of the IGDA's Game Writers' Special Interest Group, the book is dense with information, addressing everything from high-level narrative theory to the specifics of dialogue engine design and game localization." Read the rest of Aeonite's review. Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames author Chris Mark Bateman pages 336 publisher Thomson Delmar Learning rating 9 reviewer Aeonite ISBN 1584504900 summary an excellent overview of the ins-and-outs of writing for the videogame industry

When I see that a movie has multiple writers involved, I get a little nervous. It's usually a bad sign, generally indicating that the narrative will be somewhat piecemeal and uneven. As this book has 13 writers and a half-dozen additional subeditors, I was likewise nervous, but I was happy to discover that although each chapter has a different emphasis, the general tone remains steady throughout the book. There's a little more fluff up front, and a little more crunch in the back, but taken as a whole the book maintains a coherent focus. These 13 voices speak in harmony, and adequately cover both the creative and technical aspects of writing for games without any noticeable bumps.

The preface by Chris Bateman explains that a book on videogame writing is difficult to write, as many areas of the industry are still ill-defined. Whereas Hollywood has a fairly standard screenplay format that's fairly easy to work with, the videogame industry offers no single script format, due to the different requirements of different genres and different companies. Personal experience has taught me, for instance, that Microsoft Excel is one of the more useful tools when writing for games; one would not generally associate spreadsheets with narrative flow.

The chief complaint here is that there are no clear examples of great game narratives, with the industry's shining stars falling somewhat below the highest standards of work in other media. My interpretation of this is that Half-Life 2 is less Godfather 2, and more Escape From L.A. — good enough, but not great. According to Bateman, chief culprits for the lack of artistic polish may include the fact that the game industry is so young (compared to radio, television, and movies) and the lack of artistic freedom within the industry.

Worth calling out here is an example of where the industry seems to be falling short. At one point, the book discusses the concept of 'forced failure' in games, and why it's a narrative tactic to be avoided. A good example of this (my own, not the book's) is near the end of the original Half-Life game, which sees Gordon Freeman captured, stripped of all his gear, and dumped in a trash compactor, with the player unable to do anything but watch. Yet Half-Life won numerous Game of the Year awards, and is still considered by many to be one of the best games of all time. The point is not that Half-Life is a bad game for using 'forced failure', but rather that it could have been a a better game if it hadn't resorted to that tactic. In other words, even good games can do better, and this book is a first step towards achieving that goal, by way of establishing a 'coherent narrative language' for games.

The book itself is divided into 14 chapters. The first three can be roughly clustered into a category called Game Narrative, as they all focus on higher-level narrative theory. Chapter 1 provides an overall introduction, defining story, character, and other such terms before delving into what makes game writing unique (as compared to other media) and how a writer uses the tools provided (dialogue, cutscenes, etc.). Chapter 2 covers the Basics of Narrative, including Aristotle's Poetics, Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, Freytag's Pyramid, Syd Field's Screenplay model, and the other sorts of things we English majors learn in school in lieu of math and science. Extensive discussion of Star Wars: Episode IV and how it maps to these models is provided, along with some coverage of Jungian and Campbellian Archetypes. Chapter 3 is an overview of what's involved with writing for games, covering the difference between narrative and story, types of narrative, pacing, structure, and the concept of player agency.

The next four chapters of the book contain less high-level theory and more specific application. The first two cover the path the character takes through the game, with Chapter 4 being an exploration of Nonlinear Game Narrative (branching structure, parallel paths, and how to merge story and game) and Chapter 5 discussing how to keep the player on track (breadcrumbing, funneling, the "edge of the world", etc.). Chapter 6 covers Game Characters (including types of protagonists, antagonists, and NPCs, and the traits and characteristics thereof), and Chapter 7 deals with the specifics of cutscenes and scripted events, and the dangers of removing player control.

Chapters 8 through 10 see the camera zooming out a bit more to cover the broader concepts of Writing Comedy for Videogames, Writing for Licenses, and The Needs of the Audience, respectively. Of the three, the last is the crunchiest, covering specific demographic data and the issues of gender, ethnicity and disability as they relate to a game audience.

The final four chapters cover issues specific to videogame writing, and as a whole generally focus on dialogue. The short Chapter 11 deals with Localization issues (translation, lip synching, cultural differences), with Chapter 12 covering Voice Actors more generally, including: a discussion of context, inflection, and emotion; the need to be at the recording session; and other technical considerations. Chapter 13 deals with Interchangeable Dialogue Content, and covers stitching, dialogue driven by game events, and the problems associated with simultaneity, interruptions and inflections. Chapter 14 closes the book on a crunchy note, covering Dialogue Engines in some detail, with many examples of the codelike format involved (dynamic elements, if-then statements, cases and states).

Although it probably goes without saying, this is obviously a book by writers, for writers. The book is very heavy with text, featuring only a very few charts and icons to break up the copy, so as far as layout and flow there's little to complain about aside from some minor inconsistencies, such as the little 'Note' icons which appear in Chapter 3 and nowhere else. Though dense with information, it's fairly easy to find your way around, as the book features an 8-page glossary, 6-page index and a perhaps too-detailed 9-page table of contents. Also worth noting is the copyediting; aside from some very sporadic typographical issues, the book gets an A+ for editing (with Chapter 2 perhaps only an A). Overall, it's hardly worth mentioning, which is always a good thing when it comes to typos.

My biggest complaint with the book is what's not covered. For instance, examples from real games, is billed as a main feature on the back cover, but there could have been more of them, especially with regards to more current games. This is not to say that they're not in there, but certain chapters (particularly those in the book's first third) would have benefited from less Star Wars and more Knights of the Old Republic. It's helpful to be aware of the high-level theory, but this is after all a book about game writing, so more examples from relevant games would be welcome.

I also found myself wishing that the book had devoted a chapter to breaking into the field of videogame writing. Books on other aspects of game design and development typically include such information: I have several on my desk right now that discuss how to create a portfolio and land a job as a Level Designer or Game Designer. Do videogame writers simply spring from the head of Zeus, ready for battle? With this information in place, the book would be a more useful tool to everyone from the pro writer to the complete novice; as it stands, the book is much more helpful to those already in the field. However, wishing that the book covered job entry is, I admit, somewhat akin to wishing that a book on carpentry also included a chapter on lumberjacking. Relevant, but not to be faulted for its absence.

As a whole, the book does what it sets out to accomplish, and provides a good overview of the issues involved in writing for videogames. It's a must-have for anyone in the videogame industry, or anyone who wishes to be.

You can purchase Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "The Information Revolution subtitled, The Not-For-Dummies Guide to the History, Technology and Use of the World Wide Web, is the second in a trilogy by J.R. Okin. The first book, The Internet Revolution, covering the Internet in general and the third, The Technology Revolution being a guide to The Impact, Perils and Promise of the Internet. I have not read either of those two books, but I believe that each can be read independently, and this review should be viewed in that light." Read the rest of Aeonite's review. The Information Revolution: The Not-For-Dummies Guide to the History, Technology and Use of the World Wide Web author J.R. Okin pages 352 publisher Ironbound Press rating 5 reviewer Aeonite ISBN 0-9763857-3-2 summary A guide to the World Wide Web that strays into shadowy territory

The author's goal in writing this particular book is, first, to create a somewhat comprehensive overview of the World Wide Web. This is not to say that this book is an Internet Yellow Pages, like the myriad website guides that came out during the Web's early days. Rather, the book approaches the concept of the Web from the perspective of a total Web "newbie", discussing its precursors, its creation, its evolution and, to an extent, its future. For total newbies, this may seem a bit too thick (hence the book's subtitle), but for others much of the material will seem too basic; at one point, the author states that it's a surprise to most people that the web was created for the purpose of publishing as well as reading content. Such a fact is hardly a surprise to the average Slashdot reader, and certainly not to the masses currently posting on MySpace, YouTube, LiveJournal, and other MixedCaps websites which encourage self-publishing.

Overall, the book succeeds fairly well as a history and an overview. The stickier issues occur when the author occasionally drifts away from "unbiased history" and closer to "hopeful prophecy." One goal of this book, in the author's words, is to "to help others recognize and appreciate how the Web empowers individuals and why the egalitarian composition of the Web is so important and revolutionary." Later, he states that "no one individual or organization can argue that they have a larger or more prominent location on the Web because the Web does not include any type of hierarchy that makes such distinctions possible." This is true on a basic structural level, but anyone who knows about Google Page Rankings, the limitations of "free web page" providers and other issues (such as the net neutrality battle brewing in Congress) knows very well that there's a definite hierarchical structure to the Web. Joe Bagadonutz' Geocities Tribute to Donuts is certainly less prominent than the Tim Hortons home page when it comes to donuts; even if on a theoretical level they're both equal under the eyes of the Web, in the real world all websites are not created equal.

The book is divided into nine chapters (numbered 0 through 8), each covering a different facet of the Web in roughly chronological order. The first three chapters cover the creation and structure of the Web, and are presented in terms of what people did to get the Web to where it is today. The next three discuss the Web in terms of Information, Multimedia and Business, and discuss where the Web is today in terms of what it provides to you, the consumer. The final three chapters cover more personal matters, including home pages, Internet security and privacy, and the Web's Semantic future.

Chapter 0, "The Pre-Web Internet and Information Management," covers about 5 decades of time, from the 1940s through the creation of Mosaic in 1993. It discusses the gradual creation of what we now know as the Web, including both specific technologies such as Archie, Gopher, WAIS, etc., as well as more basic functions such as searchability and the notion of hyperlinks.

Chapter 1, "The Web is Born," spends a lot of time with Tim Berners-Lee, dwelling in the 1990s. It covers topics such as the first website (at info.cern.ch, which no longer exists), the multi-platform Mosaic browser, the Web being declared public domain, the browser wars of 1994, and the ultimate triumph of Internet Explorer. Though comprehensive, the chapter has a tendency to skip around in time, sometimes going back and forth from 1995 to 1994, then forward to 1999 and back to 1995; a purely chronological structure might have proven more readable. The material here also tends to dwell a bit too much in the realm of what could have been, sacrificing some relevant detail about what actually was. For example, some amount of time is given over to discussing "the Web that was lost," the NeXT computer and browsers with self-publishing tools built right in. However, Internet Explorer is acknowledged only in terms of its original Mosaic-based version (described as "weak" and "slow"), and its ultimate victory in the "Browser wars" is mentioned only in passing in a sentence that mentions Netscape being bypassed in 1999. Whether or not Microsoft is the "bad guy" is irrelevant; more equitable coverage of their victory would seem to be in order here.

Chapter 2, "The Mechanics of the Web," is a bit crunchier, discussing everything from DNS to HTML in some detail. It is perhaps the most illustrative example of the book's difficulty in appealing to a single audience, because much of the material here is not technical enough for geeks, while simultaneously being a bit too thick for total amateurs. There are also several minor details that will have geeks groaning: previous chapters referred to the triad of HTTP, HTML and URI (as on page 82), but here it's suddenly HTTP, HTML and URL (on page 110), and a sample of HTML code on page 139 is missing a tag.

Chapter 3, "The Information Web," discusses means of sharing and searching for information on the Web. Much of the coverage is fairly broad in scope, such as the concepts of information filtering and "push vs pull," but specific technologies such as cookies, bots, spiders and proxy servers are also given a few pages each. Some of the author's conclusions here will seem a bit odd to those more familiar with the Web. For example, on page 151 he directs readers to research various search engines to determine HOW they search, in order to pick the best one for a particular search; such a direction seems well-meaning but impractical at best for most people. A few pages later, he says that "many companies have found that unrestricted access to the Web leads to a significant amount of lost work time...". Not backed up with specific stats or a citation, it's questionable why such a statement is presented here in this format. This is nitpicking, however.

Chapter 4, "The Multimedia Web," takes us back into the crunch, covering specific technologies such as various audio types (mp3, midi, RealAudio), video types (quicktime, Real, mpeg) and true multimedia (java, flash, vrml). As elsewhere, what's most notable is what's absent, with no mention of Windows Media; love it or hate it, it's arguably the predominant format on the Web, and it seems disingenuous to simply omit it, for whatever reason, particularly when lesser technologies (QTVR, and even Yahoo's Fish Cam) are covered.

Such "errors by omission" become more apparent in Chapter 5, "The Business Web," which, as the title suggests, covers businesses that have succeeded and failed on the World Wide Web. Failures covered include WebVan, Kozmo, Pets.com, eToys and GovWorks, and successes include Netscape, Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo and Google. The coverage of Google and Netscape, in particular, represents the most serious issues I have with the chapter, and the book as a whole. Google is covered mostly as a search engine, and while Froogle, Answers and Groups are mentioned, the author goes so far as to say that "individuals do not have the same kind of incentive to return to Google that they have elsewhere," a statement that obviously does not take into account Gmail or Google Talk.

More egregious is the coverage here of Netscape as a success story. In the three pages devoted to the company, we learn about its 1995 IPO, SSL, SuiteSpot, Communicator, and its becoming a subsidiary of AOL in 1999. However, there is not a single mention of AOL's shirking Netscape in favor of IE, the buggy (and late) Netscape 6, or, in fact, anything to indicate that Netscape had a rough patch. We all know this particular emperor lost his clothing; why not mention it? Search Google for "Netscape downfall" and you get over 100,000 hits; here, you don't even get an inkling that anything is wrong. Perhaps it's merely an oversight. Later, on page 237, Netscape Communicator is mentioned along with IE as one form of free Web software, with no mention of Firefox, Opera or Safari, all of which (according to my own web stats) have a far greater share of the market than Netscape at this point.

In Chapter 6, "The People Web," the author's intended audience becomes a bit more clear, as he asks "Do you have a home page? How about your son or daughter, or perhaps your grandmother?" In short, he is speaking to moms and dads, not geeks or grandmothers or even teens. On page 247, a recitation of the things websites can be used for includes baseball card collections, health issues and music, but not porn or shareware. Turn the page, and the author prompts you to "pick your favorite celebrity, go to a search engine such as Google, and enter his name. Unless you have chosen someone relatively obscure, you will be amazed at the number of sites that are found. What is truly impressive, however, is the quality of many of these sites." Even more impressive, and yet not mentioned here at all, is the plethora of websites given over to celebrity nudes. Yet later, ample space is given to discussion of job hunting, web dating, and genealogy, but blogging is discussed with nary a mention of either LiveJournal or MySpace, making it feel as if this particular chapter was written a few years ago. This is not a discussion of what's on the Web; it's a discussion of what you want your mom to think is on the Web.

With that in mind, Chapter 7, "The Shadow Web," is all about how to scare your mom by telling her about how scary the Web can be. This is the chapter she's going to ask you about the next time you're over for dinner. In the author's words: "The shadow Web captures and tracks our movements as we browse and click our way across the Web. It knows which browser we use, which operating system is on our computer, and roughly, if not exactly, where we and our computer are located." While true on some level, the deeper implication here is that the Shadow Web is like something out of a movie starring Will Smith and Sandra Bullock, in which the bad guys are always watching you, everywhere. To be sure, there are concerns (NSA monitoring, wiretapping, etc.) but here even mundane things like Cookies and Web bugs are made out to be spookier than they are.

On Banners: "The amount of data generated by these banners is enormous; it is all about us and our use of the Web; and it is accumulating at an exponential rate."

On Web logs: "So every time you load a Web page, at least one Web server, and often more than one, adds a series of lines to its log files with information about you, the date and time, and the requested information."

On Web bugs: "...it could just as easily be recording that YOU loaded the page..."

You, you, you. The Web is tracking YOU personally. This is at the very least misleading. Certainly, these technologies track and record information about our computers, our IP addresses, our Internet connections. And certainly, they can track more if we log in or give them permission. Nothing that the author says in this regard is untrue. But here, the discussion of these technologies intentionally takes a personal tack, and the only comparison I can draw is to those websites that pop up and warn you that "Your IP address has been recorded." Of course it has. That's how it works.

Certainly, it's useful to understand what other people know about you, but it doesn't seem helpful to incite this level of distrust, particularly when the author doesn't provide any solution to the problem. About all he can do is provide this little bit of snark to close the chapter: "Read all the privacy statements you want. The one thing they all have in common is an acknowledgment that information about us and our use of the Web is being routinely recorded." Go ahead, read whatever you want. Throw your hands in the air. There's nothing you can do. It's bad enough that some of our parents don't want to buy things online with her credit card; if they read this, they might not even want to turn their computers on any more.

An anti-commercial, pro-open source bias is also clear in this chapter. The author mentions that his shadow Web first appeared "when commercial Web sites started to appear on the Web," and calls banner affiliates "Organizations that Live Off Our Movements." Why he didn't just use the word "parasites" is not clear, since it's obvious that's what he meant.

Chapter 8, "The Semantic Web," plays Paradiso to chapter 7's Inferno, providing "a vision for the Web of tomorrow" which has as its foundation better classification of links via tagging, with the wider use of XML as the framework for documents and RDF (Resource Description Framework) as the, well, framework for supporting the exchange of knowledge. Some of what's discussed here comes across as a bit hypocritical, especially compared to the previous chapter. For example, page 310 discusses an "agent" knowing your street address and zip code and using it to find stores within a radius of X, but although this involves the Web knowing something about YOU it's presented as less intrusive than the "Shadow Web" knowing your IP address. Even in heaven, it appears we must be tracked.

Later, the chapter discusses the need for a Web of trust, with digital signatures and a web of interconnected, trusted relationships, somewhat akin to what's happening nowadays on social networking communities like Friendster, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, none of which are mentioned here. The ultimate result, the author hopes, is as follows: "If the Semantic Web can establish a global knowledge space out of today's information space, a great many changes in our world and in ourselves will surely follow." Change seems easy to predict; I would have preferred that the author be a bit more bold in his vision of the future of the Web.

The book's Appendix leads off with three pages of timeline through the year 2000 and a chart of the number of sites on the Web from 1993 to 2002, both indications of the book's necessarily limited scope when dealing with a moving target like the World Wide Web. This is followed by 14 pages of Internet Jargon, Netiquette and Emoticons, some of which appear to have been lifted from Dilbert comics, and many of which (e.g., Monkey Bath) have no relevance whatsoever to the book's subject matter. The Index is decent, although the equivalent of one full page is given over to a list of the aforementioned jargon terms, which shouldn't be in the book at all, in my opinion.

Overall, the book provides a good history of the Web and a solid understanding of its fundamentals without straying into the realm of jargon, and it is worth purchasing in that regard for those interested in such material. The problems come later in the book when the author strays into squishier areas, and any "net vet" who's been around since Mosaic will likely question what he has to say.

The author's Open Source bias is also clearly evident in some places (Mr. Okin has among his clients the Open Software Foundation), and for some readers his "blue sky/gray sky" view of things might be somewhat of a turn-off, especially for more jaded readers who are more familiar with the status quo on the Web. At one point, he states that "just beyond the e-commerce portal sites and storefronts and the mass-media newspapers and magazines exists a corporate-free and commerce-free Web of amazing richness and diversity that millions of people have already discovered and that more people are discovering every day."

As with other things, this may be true on a very basic level, but not in any practical sense. Almost every web comic runs banner ads and/or Google Adwords ads. Just about every author (amateur or pro) has got Amazon links and search boxes on his or her homepage. Even Maddox, author of "The Best Page in the Universe" (and one of the most anti-commercial, anti-corporate personalities on the Internet) has a book coming out through Citadel Press; the book briefly hit #1 on Amazon.com as a pre-order only item.

Certainly, such things are a clear sign of the web's empowering, egalitarian nature, which the author rightly lauds. But is that same Web truly, mostly commerce-free? Hardly. The World Wide Web of the future may indeed be Semantic, but that doesn't mean it won't have price tags and bar codes all over it."

You can purchase The Information Revolution: The Not-For-Dummies Guide to the History, Technology and Use of the World Wide Web from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "The word "Selling" is boldfaced and blue on the cover of The Indie Developer's Guide to Selling Games, making it abundantly clear that it's the emphasis of the book. To that end, the book stays away from everything that drifts away from the topic of selling; you won't find advice here on how to design a mascot, or how to create game levels that will keep players coming back for more. You will, however, learn a lot about how best to market your game to the public, both before and after you've actually created it." Read the rest of Michael's review. The Indie Developer's Guide to Selling Games author Joseph Lieberman pages 153 publisher VGSmart rating 7 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN summary A guide to marketing PC games for the indie developer.

The word "Indie" in the title is also key here, because it represents not only the intended audience for the book, but its aesthetic as well. While the lessons taught here certainly apply to any business venture, the level of knowledge presumed, and the informal way in which the book shares its secrets, is definitely intended to appeal to the smaller game company (or individual). The reason for this is clear: author Joseph Lieberman founded his indie game marketing company VG Smart (Video Game Marketing, Smart!) after deciding, in his words, that there was "a large market of independent developers who need someone with the expertise and time to establish business side communications with press, news, and publishing companies." This book is by indie, for indie, through and through.

The press material for the book declares that it is "written to be an enjoyable read even if the developer in question despises marketing," and it fulfills that goal remarkably well. Although it covers many meaty topics — vertical and horizontal niches, SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), just to name a few — it never feels bogged down in the sort of Marcom doublespeak that we've all heard at one time or another. The concepts are presented in a clear fashion, and the focus is on practical use of the lessons learned, rather than the mere recitation of theoretical concepts.

The book is divided into six chapters, each covering a different stage of game marketing, and each divided up into a dozen or so subtopics. Each chapter and subtopic starts off with a One Sentence Summary that gives you the gist of what's going to be covered, making each little chunk easier to grasp as a whole. Each chapter is also littered with little "Did You Know?" and "Tip" factoid boxes meant to further clarify the point being discussed. Taken out of context, many of them seem a little too obvious and not terribly informative (e.g., "Sometimes it is easier to get better at something you are GOOD at than get good at something you are BAD at!"), but taken in the context of the page they appear on they serve as good visual reminders of what the text is talking about.

Chapter 1 covers Design Marketing, and topics ranging from defining a target market by hobby and niche, to the "Keep it Simple, Stupid" theory. Although the bulk of the book sort of assumes that the reader has progressed a bit further, the material here does make some suggestions about game design itself (albeit with an eye towards future marketing). Should you design for Macs? Probably. How about Linux? Probably not. The chapter also ends with a long list of resources that might prove useful to a fledgling company: pages 27 through 40 cover art and music resources (including a number of individuals), and pages 41 through 50 list and discuss various payment processors.

Chapter 2, In Production Marketing, discusses marketing efforts a game company might make while their game is (naturally) being produced. Link exchanges, copyright issues, pre-orders and newsletters are all discussed, as well as the all-important topic of Search Engine Optimization, which is discussed at some length. Recommendations about price are made ($19.99 to $24.99 is a good range), and information about setting up distribution partnerships and contacting publishers is also present. Website design is covered in this chapter too, but it represents one of the book's weaker points; written by another author, it's rather terse and of questionable utility as it stands. Like the previous chapter, this one ends with several lists, with Distribution resources (pages 76-91) and download sites (92-95) being presented.

Release Marketing is the topic of Chapter 3, with the goal being to "see if we can create the big push that brings your game into the limelight, or at least drags it far enough above the dirt and debris that deluge the market every day to be noticed by those looking." Press releases, types of releases, press coverage, and advertising are all covered, with a good bit of time devoted to ad terminology, including standard ad sizes, CPM, CPC and CPA, and the like. The list at the end of this chapter includes just over two pages of websites that are "indie friendly," and might be a good place to get your game covered or reviewed.

Chapter 4: Post Release Marketing reminds the reader that "You are Finished When you're Dead," indicating that marketing efforts are never truly over as long as you intend to keep making money off your game. Updates and upgrades are discussed, as well as the power of sequels, cross-selling items, blogging and the like. At only seven pages in length it feels a bit light, but it's still weightier than the three-page-long Chapter 5: Dealing with Change, which is really just an essay discussing the current state of things, and how it's all in a state of flux. It feels a bit out of place here, as it wants to be a conclusion but winds up as a lead-in to Chapter 6, but makes its point well.

The sixth and final chapter, Advanced Marketing, delves a bit deeper into marketing tactics, with a particular focus on motivation and what the author calls the Motivational Pyramid, a perspective on motivating game sales by keeping track of a hierarchical structure of game factors. These are broken down into Macro Motivations (Competitive, Goal-based, Story-based, etc.), Micro Motivations (Rewards, Visual Response, etc.) and Constant Motivations (Sound and Sight). The chapter also covers Guerilla and Word-of-Mouth Marketing and includes a few brief thoughts about legal issues that ends with the always valuable tip: "talk to a lawyer."

The book concludes with a few pages about the author and those who helped the book along. What it does not include is an index, which would in my opinion help the book out a bit structurally. At times, the chapter, topic and subtopic headers get a bit confused, as the font sizes used for each are quite similar. Coupled with the fact that the layout is rather unvarying, and the spacing is a bit erratic on some pages, one can lose a sense of flow moving through the book. Some better organization, such as that provided by an index, could only help a reader along.

As mentioned earlier, the book has a definite "Indie" aesthetic, and neither the presentation nor the layout is polished to a perfect shine. To say "beauty is only skin deep" is only to get halfway to the point; with no graphics to speak of (but for a few tables) and a very spartan design, you can see right through the skin, down to the bone. The book's bones are solid, however, and they provide a good foundation for any Indie game developer to build upon.

The largest issue is probably the book's price. Although I feel that the information within is certainly worth it, some readers might balk at the price tag for the 153-page book ($34.95 for a Paperback, and $27.95 for a PDF, at the time of this review). The author also apparently intends to include some form of downloadable updates for portions of the book; at one point, he explains that a list will "eventually go out of date, but like ALL of the resources in the book you can purchase a new copy of only the resources section (in E-Book form), fully up to date!" The frequency and price points for these updates remains to be seen, as the book is new and there are no updates available at this time.

Overall, the book provides a game designer with a solid foundation of several key marketing principles, with an excellent discussion of Search Engine Optimization and Advertising terminology standing out as highlights. Its Indie aesthetic may turn some potential readers off, but for those who can look beyond appearances, this may be a worthwhile investment for those who don't have the luxury of a Marketing department down the hall.

Samples of the book's first three pages and the table of contents are available at the www.indiegameguide.com website. The book is available in PDF and print format, the latter through CafePress.

Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "The quote on the cover of Patterns in Game Design proclaims that this book is "that rare sort" that is actually "useful." It is perhaps somewhat presumptuous to disagree with someone like Greg Costikyan, but nevertheless I have my doubts as to the book's overall utility. While this book certainly seems like the sort of be-all, end-all of game design theory, what it amounts to is little more than a list, each item on the list referring to the other items like bloggers hawking each others' hyperlinks. What could have been a sort of cookbook for gaming turns out to be less a book of recipes, and more a list of ingredients: "a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter." Read the rest of Michael's review. Patterns in Game Design author Staffan Björk & Jussi Holopainen pages 448 publisher Charles River Media rating 4 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 1584503548 summary A comprehensive compendium of game design "patterns"

The book is broken into two Parts and 15 Chapters. Part I, "Background," explains the overall approach that the authors took in creating the rest of the book, exploring four different categories of gameplay (holistic, boundary, temporal, and structural), explaining the template used for the game design patterns that follow, and suggesting means for identifying patterns and applying them to the design of a game.

Part II, the bulk of the book, is where the Pattern Collection itself lies. The collection is broken into eleven chapters, each covering a grouping of patterns that share a common element. Chapter 5, for example, covers "Game Design Patterns for Game Elements," which includes Game Worlds, Objects, Abstract Objects and Locations. Each of those categories is further broken down into the Patterns themselves; for example, "Abstract Objects" includes Patterns such as Score, High Score Lists, and Lives.

Each Pattern is laid out in the same fashion. First, there is a one-sentence summary of the Pattern, followed by a more detailed description, and any relevant examples. This is followed in turn by examples of Using the Pattern, Consequences of its use, and its Relations to other Patterns. Relations include a list of other Patterns that fall into five categories: "Instantiates" (causes other Patterns to be present), "Modulates" (affects other Patterns and thus gameplay), "Instantiated by" (is caused to appear based on other Patterns being present), "Modulated by" (is affected by other Patterns), and "Potentially Conflicting with" (can cause other Patterns to be impossible within gameplay).

This all sounds a bit scholarly, and it is, but once you get the hang of it, it's not all that hard to slog through. However, it is indeed a slog -- each Pattern is in great part made up of references to other Patterns, which means that for a full understanding of any one Pattern, you must consume many other portions of the book. In their introduction, the authors do point out that this was their intent, and that you can "read the patterns in any order, similar to how a dictionary or encyclopedia is used." Indeed, reading through the book in any fashion is about as entertaining as reading those books. Which is to say, it's occasionally enlightening, but not really easy to do for any length of time. Here's an example from the "Surprises" Pattern, where any italicized word is a reference to another Pattern:

"One requirement for Surprises is the absence of Game State Overview or the presence of Imperfect Information or Limited Foresight. Because of this, Surprises are most often achieved by having Dedicated Game Facilitators such as Game Masters. Never Ending Stories are a way of overcoming the problems of Narrative Structures by combining Surprises with Replayability, thus making the narrative continue and change forever."

At the end of many subcategories are references to "Additional Patterns," which are only explored on the CD-ROM that accompanies the book, apparently having been left out for lack of space. Their omission (they do not even appear in the book's Table of Contents or Index) makes the book itself somewhat less useful than it otherwise could have been, since the Patterns within the book so often refer to Relations with Patterns that are not actually found in the book itself. The net result is that if (for example) you are reading about Surprises, and you want to learn about Never Ending Stories, you have to put the book down and pop the CD-ROM in. Not only is this disruptive, but it's impractical at best.

Were the CD-ROM itself more easily and logically laid out, it might have overcome some of the problems within the book. Containing everything within the book, plus the many additional Patterns not found in print, the bare-bones HTML allows you to browse either alphabetically by Pattern name, or "by chapters." This latter is somewhat misleading, for the list of Patterns within each Chapter is alphabetical on the CD-ROM, and not so within the book. On the CD-ROM, Chapter 5 starts with the following Patterns: Alarm, Alternative Reality, Avatars... In the book, however, Chapter 5 contains the category Game Worlds, and then Patterns such as Game World, Reconfigurable Game World, Levels, etc., in that order. The lack of consistency can make for some maddening moments trying to toggle back and forth between book and CD-ROM, like reading a dictionary that's in part alphabetical, and in part organized by, "nouns," "verbs," "adjectives," etc.

The CD-ROM is also inconsistent when it comes to the book's two Appendices. Appendix A, "Further Reading," contains a list of over fifty articles and books referenced elsewhere in the text, and appears only in the book. Appendix B, "About the CD ROM," appears in both the book and on the CD, where for some curious reason it's in Word DOC format. There are also an assortment of images, including colorized versions of those found in the book, as well as a set of PowerPoint presentations.

Overall, the book does succeed in compiling an impressive list of Game Design Patterns. Whether the list can ever amount to anything more than scholarly masturbation is another question. The thick language, combined with the definition of Patterns by reference to other Patterns, means that overall this book is probably about as useful in the realm of Game Design as a Dictionary is in the teaching of the English language. Which is to say, it's undoubtedly a useful tool as part of a much, much broader toolset, but in and of itself it leaves quite a lot to be desired."

You can purchase Patterns in Game Design from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite writes "Cybernetics (that is to say, the sort associated with Cyberpunk) has long been an interest of mine, and so I was eager to dive into Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids , which is about exactly what it proclaims to be about. Sort of. The book does indeed cover everything from Bionic Humans to Androids, but the continuum of artificial beings is heavily weighted towards one end of the spectrum. Overall, the book is quite comprehensive in dealing with physical aspects of artificial intelligences, but when it comes to the nature of intelligence itself, the book barely dips its toe in the water. As the author himself says, the question here is not "Can machines think?", like Turing, but rather 'Can machines live?'" Read on for the rest of Aeonite's review. Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids author Sidney Perkowitz pages 248 publisher Joseph Henry Press rating 7 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 0309089875 summary A detailed exploration of the history of artificial beings

Where Have We Been? The book opens with a 13-page introduction ("Androids All Around Us") that sets up the material to follow, exploring the nature of artificial things and how we bond to them, personifying everything from the obviously inanimate cars and computers, to seemingly lifelike robots like MIT's Cog and Kismet, Sony's AIBO and Tiger's I-Cybie. The lines between what's alive and what's artificial are blurred even further when one considers that some 10 percent of the U.S. population are by definition bionic, possessing some degree of artificial parts -- everything from prosthetic limbs, to artificial hearts and hips, to breast implants and hearing aids. Not that this is anything new; the author tells us, for instance, that Aristotle imagined artificial beings in the 4th Century BCE, and several of the Norse gods and heroes had artificial hair and limbs. The difference now is that we're on the verge -- how close is up for debate -- of creating artificial, intelligent life, and it is the author's argument that now is the time to start thinking more about what that means. "To create artificial minds and bodies," he says, "we must first better understand ourselves."

The bulk of the book is split into two parts. The first, "Artificial Beings: Meaning and History" is semi-self explanatory, featuring three chapters that cover the history of robots, automatons and the like, from ancient times to the present day.

Chapter 2, "The Virtual History of Artificial Beings", is devoted entirely to fictional beings -- not only R2D2, Robocop, The Six Million Dollar Man, and other modern examples, but also Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Pygmalion's ivory statue, the bronze Talos, Jewish golems and Frank L. Baum's Tin Man and Tik-Tok, among others. Interesting tidbits abound here: for example, the revelation that the term Robot -- first featured in Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) -- comes from the Czech word "robota," which means "forced labor." Also interesting is the acknowledgment that for all the attention paid to Asimov's three laws of robotics, many of his stories deal with situations where those laws are broken, bent or otherwise shown to be invalid.

Chapters 3 and 4, on the other hand, cover real examples of artificial beings and bionic devices, from classical times to the early 1990s. Everything from Jacques de Vaucanson's musicians and Pierre Jaquet-Droz's automata, to explorations with galvanism in the 18th Century, to the development of computers and robots through the first half of the 19th Century are addressed. Again, the author digs up some fascinating insights and revelations here: mention of iron prosthetic legs in ancient Indian poetry; wooden and bronze legs for Greek and Roman soldiers; and the idea that advances in medicine since World War 2 have allowed soldiers to live with grievous wounds more often, which in turn has led to an increased need for development of better prosthetics.

Where Are We Now? The second part of the book, "How Far Along Are We?", spans five chapters, and covers mind-body interfaces, methods of robotic locomotion, sensory input, self-awareness and the like.

Chapter 5, "Mind-Body Problems", is very theoretical, offering more questions than answers, particularly as compared to the respectively crunchy material already covered. Can an artificial brain support a conscious artificial mind? Is a soul something special and unique to humans, or just the collective perceptions of a 3-pound mass of watery tissue? The following two chapters are a bit more crunchy, covering "Limbs, Movement and Expression" and "The Five Senses, and Beyond", respectively. Both provide plenty of concrete examples of the subject matter, with today's most advanced robots -- Honda's P2, P3 and ASIMO; Tokyo IT's snakelike ACM R-1; NASA's Robonaut, Spirit and Opportunity; and MIT's Kismet -- covered in reasonable depth. Problems and limitations of robots are also dealt with, including sensory bandwidth limitation, facial detection failure rates, the concept of "good enough" speech recognition, etc.

Chapter 8 takes us upstairs, covering "Thinking, Emotion and Self-Awareness" and the basics of what it means to have a robot brain. The world's three "smart" digital beings are covered in some depth here: ASIMO, the oldest, can walk backwards, keep balance, react to body language, recognize its name and wave hello; Kismet, who consists of only a head and face, can react to movements and expressions, but requires 15 networked computers to do so; and Sony's QRIO is only 23 inches tall, but can have 20,000 word conversations, sing in harmony, and greet people it knows by name, based only on facial recognition. Also covered are Commander Data's emotion chip, monkeys controlling robot arms with their brains, and the infamous light-seeking eels, ever a favorite on Slashdot.

Chapter 9, "Frankenstein's Creature or Commander Data", explores the ramifications of robotic development, and how they differ from society to society. In Japan, where roughly half of the world's million robots reside, artificial creatures have a mostly civilian role, whereas in America, military applications have a larger role. Does this result from religious differences? The author, citing Robert Christopher, suggests that Buddhists take a different view of robots than do Christians because Buddhism "does not place man at the center of the universe, and in fact, makes no particular distinction between the animate and the inanimate." Samurai swords have souls, and machines have ghosts.

Where Does That Leave Us? What, in the end, does this mean for us? Can machines be truly human if they never grow up, have no accumulated cultural experience? What does it mean for humans when the cost of labor rises while the cost of robots falls? Will it happen in our lifetimes? Turing predicted that a machine would pass his infamous test by the end of the century; Kurzweil says it will happen by 2029. Who's to say? Not the author -- he leaves off with no conclusions but that the journey will be uplifting, and will give us a sense of wonder at what we might accomplish.

This seeming lack of conclusion leaves the book a bit shallow, though one can't truly fault the author for not answering such a difficult question, especially since he backs away from "going there" at several points in the book. The author's refusal to speculate deeply about such matters make it clear why certain examples were "missing" from Part 1. While relatively minor works such as Marge Piercy's 1991 "He, She and It" were covered there, William Gibson's Neuromancer was notably absent (the author is only mentioned once, in passing, on page 189). And in a section that covered Blade Runner, The Terminator, Robocop and the Six Million Dollar Man, where were Ghost in the Shell and Max Headroom, both of which cover the nature of what it means to be artificial? The answer can probably be found in chapter 5's final sentence, which reads (in part): "...although the full mind-body recipe remains unknown for us and our artificial kin, a great deal of progress has been made on the bodily ingredient..." In other words, "we don't know much about the mental stuff, so let's look at the physical." This particular focus means that the book skews heavily towards a discussion of robots and robotics, with comparatively little attention paid to bionics and cybernetics; a better subtitle might have been "From Robots to Androids".

Also a bit troublesome is the fact that several areas -- particularly those dealing with more recent developments -- are glossed over, mentioned briefly, even tantalizingly, and then left behind. Electro-Active Polymers and the AMRI (Artificial Muscle Research Institute) are mentioned only in passing, and although brain-machine interfaces are mentioned several times, it's never with any real depth. The book's Filmography suffers from this focus on the past as well; only two of the 23 films and TV shows listed are from the past decade, with Star Trek and The Terminator left to represent the 1990s all alone. Although the book's historical perspective is intriguing, I would have preferred to hear a bit more about current events and examples.

Overall, Digital People is an enjoyable read, and is heavy with substance for those interested in learning about the history of artificial beings and robots, from ancient times to the 1990s. Those looking for more about cybernetics and human-machine interfaces might find themselves wanting more, but if your own tastes run more towards Asimov than Gibson, you won't be disappointed.

You can purchase Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "The title of Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation says it all. In its exploration of the first 15 seasons from The Simpsons, the book does much more than relate funny moments, reprint favorite quotes and point out trivia that you might have missed in your first (or fifteenth) watching of any particular episode. To be certain, those things are there, but they're really secondary to the overall 'mission' of the book, which is to relate the rise of the cartoon to the political, social and cultural realities of the 1990s and early 2000s." Read on for the rest of Fiegel's review. Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation author Chris Turner pages 464 publisher Da Capo Press rating 7 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 0306813416 summary An exploration of The Simpsons and its impact on society (and vice versa)

Perhaps in keeping with the counter-cultural, DIY, anti-authoritarian attitude of The Simpsons itself, the book is decidedly unauthorized, the back cover stating for the record that it was "not prepared, licensed, approved or endorsed by any entity involved in creating or producing The Simpsons." In fact, although episodes are referred to by their official production codes (e.g., 9F11, or "Selma's Choice"), Matt Groening and others associated with the show are quoted only second-hand, through reprinted excerpts of old interviews.

Illustrating clearly that this is his personal take on The Simpsons, Turner opens the book with a moment in time: Thursday, January 21, 1993 at around 8:20 p.m. EST in a campus pub called Alfie's at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. There, in a room crowded with people in various stages of inebriation, the author watches Act 3 of Episode 9F11 ("Selma's Choice") of The Simpsons, and relates how the room explodes into laughter after a series of jokes about Duff Beer and its effects (e.g., beer goggles). I don't even remember this episode, but for the author and his friends it was a moment to be remembered. The point is that The Simpsons is full of such "moments," and these, reflective of society and recited ad infinitum by fans, help us see not only the way the series has shaped our world, but the way our world has shaped the series.

Off On a Rant

The book bills itself as "the first trade book to take a look at The Simpsons as a microcosm of the Western culture that it has both influenced and reflected." But author Chris Turner never goes so far as to establish a cause-effect relationship between The Simpsons and our world. In the author's own words: "...this is, in the end, my version of The Simpsons. The show's canvas is far too broad, and the culture it reflects far too diverse and fragmented, for me or anyone else to be able to offer a completely comprehensive or definitive analysis." Rather, he places the two side-by-side and views each through the mirror of the other, usually without taking his theses too far.

There are a few moments, though, where the narrative approaches the point of hyperbole -- for example, when Turner states that The Simpsons "...was the Beatles and the Stones. It was Elvis and Chuck Berry. It was that big, that unprecedented, and that important" or that "If there is a common cultural currency, it's got Homer Simpson's picture on it." Sometimes this hyperbole gets him into a bit of a pickle, as when he refers to episode 1F13 "Deep Space Homer" as "second to none", and on the same page places it second to 9F15 "Last Exit to Springfield." This has naught to do with inaccuracy, however, and everything to do with the fact that sometimes the author's love for the show sometimes clouds his vision in tints of rose. He is, at times, a sort of Anti-Comic Book Guy, chanting "Best. Episode. Ever." as he recalls his favorite moments. Is The Simpsons truly the glue that holds postmodern society together? Or is it just one brand on the shelf (albeit perhaps the best-selling brand)? Perhaps it depends on how big a fan you are; clearly, the author is a big fan.

In other places, Turner's points are a little harder to swallow, particularly in the chapters which focus on specific characters and what they represent. I can easily buy that Homer Simpson can be compared to the nature of mainstream America, with "its hopes and dreams and insatiable appetite," but I have a harder time grasping how Bart Simpson is evocative of the style and ethos of the punk rock movement's mainstreaming. Sometimes a brat is just a brat. And does Lisa Simpson truly represent the re-emergence of progressive activism in the West, or is she just a younger sister who's smarter and nicer than her brother? Later, the author (correctly) attributes the use of the phrase "I, for one, welcome our new [fill-in-the-blank] overlords" to The Simpsons, but also claims that the use of *tumbleweed blows by* on sites like Metafilter and Slashdot can be traced to The Simpsons. This latter I have a little trouble buying at face value, and I think it's overreaching a tad.

The author also has a habit of unapologetically spiralling off into a tangential rant, a la Dennis Miller. The entire book is written in this style, with point A being related to point B suddenly being compared to point Z, and the author is quite aware of it: one of the subheads in Chapter 2 is titled "A Short, Frank Discussion (Actually More Like a Longish Rambling Examination) of Homer's Extraordinary Id." In most places, this style works for the book; in others, it nearly breaks the narrative as we sputter over a side point for a few pages.

For example, in Chapter 2, "Homer's Odyssey," there's a two-page aside where the author talks about Aunty Goethe's Peachy-Mango Love Pain juice, Space Jam, Edward Munch, PBS Documentaries and several other seemingly unrelated matters. Ultimately his point about American society is clear, but it gets a little thick toward the middle, and hard to see the forest for the trees. At another point in the same chapter, a discussion of Springfield's hysterical masses turns into five-and-a-half pages devoted to the Y2K bug, getting back to The Simpsons just in time for the chapter to end. Relevant? Perhaps, but I found myself at one point wanting more Simpsons and less substance.

Similar tangents appear throughout the book, each encompassing between several paragraphs and several pages, and covering topics such as: Kurt Cobain, Quentin Tarantino, Nike, The Onion, Radiohead, William Gibson, Bowling For Columbine, John Lennon, the WELL, Tuvalu, Cyberjaya, a website named "oo," a Portuguese bus ride, Lemonwheel, The Truman Show, and Wilco's song "Misunderstood." And perhaps, viewed all together like that, those references do make a certain sort of sense as a representation of the past 15 years, but individually they occasionally seem jarring.

Mmmmm, Pizza

The book reads, at times, like a collection of essays rather than a continuous narrative. Turner at one point discusses the show's distinctive animation style, which mixes cartoonishness and realism, as follows: "(Homer) falls like a cartoon, but he lands like a real person." This book feels like that, opening in a much more fannish, cartoonish fashion and ending in a way that's a bit more thick and scholarly. The unevenness isn't ruinous, though. Consider a pizza with a few lumps and bubbles in the dough, and maybe all the pepperoni is off to one side and there's way too many mushrooms in the middle. It's still a tasty pizza, and everyone can probably find a slice they'll enjoy.

Chapter 1, "The Life & Times of The Simpsons, serves as an introduction to both the book and the series. It first retells the series' creation myth -- that it was dreamed up in 1987 by then 33-year old Groening in about 15 minutes, so he wouldn't lose the rights to Life is Hell -- before moving on to other key points, such as its April 19, 1987 debut as a sort of Anti-Cosby Show, and its first full episode on Sunday, Dec. 17, 1989 (The Christmas Special). It discusses how the show built up its creative team of writers and voice actors, the rise (and fall) of Bart-Mania in 1989-1990, and its ascent to its "Golden Age" in the mid 1990s before reaching the current "Long Plateau."

The author attributes this rise (and ensuing gentle decline) to the show's shift from typical cartoonishness into a tendency to "riff" on real-world events, reflecting society and culture in a way that audiences could relate to. "Entertain and subvert," said Groening on several occasions about the show's mission, unabashedly showing us cartoon versions of our real world's "corrupt authorities, clueless leaders and rapacious businessmen" that we could not only laugh at, but understand. "It's funny because it's true," goes the saying.

The next five chapters are, at least in name, focused on specific characters. Chapter 2, "Homer's Odyssey," and Chapter 3, "Bart Simpson, Punk Icon," are the most focused on their particular topics, with the others tending to sprawl a bit more, bringing in related minor characters and more tangents.

For example, Chapter 4, "Citizen Burns," touches not only on how Monty Burns represents corporate America (reflected through a parody of Citizen Kane), but also mentions Pimple-faced Kid, Sarcastic Middle-Aged Man, Lindsay Naegle, Jack Larson, Mayor Quimby and Chief Wiggum. Chapter 5, "Lisa Lionheart," discusses not only Lisa's many faces -- Genius, Little Kid, Activist -- but goes off on several tangents about Activism in general, Culture Jamming and Politics. Chapter 6, "Marge Knows Best," is perhaps the greatest misnomer in the book. While it does present Marge as the moral center of a show that repeatedly and blatantly denies the presence of a moral center, large sections cover the Flanders family (with special attention to Ned's "unbearable piousness"), battles with the Catholic Church and suicide-prevention groups, Abe Simpson and Homer's mom. The material is all related, but I felt Marge got a little shorted. And no mention of Maggie anywhere!

The last five chapters take a different spin, focusing not on specific characters and their relation to society, but on societal events and their relation to The Simpsons.

Chapter 7, "The Simpsons in Cyberspace," documents appearances of the Internet on The Simpsons (and vice versa) as the Internet rose from nothingness to ubiquity. It discusses "Freeze Frame Fun" (the quick jokes you can only catch if you tape and play back the show in slow-motion), alt.tv.simpsons and The Simpsons Archive (www.snpp.com), which the author cites as one of his major resources used in the writing of the book. This latter discussion includes mention of how an online critic of the show ultimately led to Comic Book Guy's infamous line in episode 4F12 "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show": "Worst. Episode. Ever." Life imitating art imitating life, as it were. Though this is interesting reading, it's also one of the more unfocused chapters, starting off talking about The Internet on The Simpsons and closing with a discussion about societal change and global warming. Slashdot readers will also be amused to see an incorrect citation of Moore's Law on page 304. But I digress.

Chapter 8, "The Ugly Springfieldianite," documents how The Simpson family's travels across America and around the world reflect U.S. actions in world affairs, the global reach of The Simpsons, and the way in which stereotypes are presented in the cartoon. Material such as trips to Australia, Canada and Africa are documented and analyzed, and "ethnic" characters such as Bumblebee Man, Apu and Groundskeeper Willie (including his infamous "Bonjourrrr, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!") are covered in detail.

Chapter 9, "The Simpsons Go Hollywood," covers the various appearances of celebrities on the show and how for the most part such appearances satirize the very stars themselves. It documents in-person appearances by Tony Blair and Tony Bennett, as well as celebrity voice acting by Kathleen Turner as Stacy Lovell (creator of Malibu Stacy) Elizabeth Taylor as Maggie's first word ("Daddy"), and Johnny Cash as a Space Coyote spirit. It also covers, in some detail, repeat appearances by stars such as Jon Lovitz, Albert Brooks, and the late Phil Hartmann (Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz), as well as the notion of celebrity within The Simpsons itself (Krusty, McBain, etc.). As a whole, this is probably the most solid and focused chapter in the book.

On the other hand, Chapter 10, "The Simpsons Through the Looking Glass," is probably one of the weakest. Still interesting reading, it's a bit unfocused, as if that looking glass were a little bit clouded. It discusses the notion of the mediascape as a vast wasteland, irony, parody, self-reference, satire, hysteria and media saturation, with special attention on the shows inside the show (Krusty, Itchy and Scratchy, etc.) and anchorman Kent Brockman. Perhaps it's a bit too broad of a topic to try and cram into one chapter, especially since many of the same points are made in other sections of the book.

Planet Simpson

The book ends with Chapter 11, "Planet Simpson," in which the author attempts to bring together the disparate ideas presented throughout the book. He discusses the notion of "what is" vs. "what should be," the amusing case of Fox nearly suing itself over Episode ABF09, "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington" (in which The Simpsons ran a fake news crawl on the bottom, satirizing Fox News), and brings his thesis to a head with this statement:

"Planet Simpson is a state of mind, a loose realm of shared consciousness. It is a place populated by folks who watch The Simpsons every week or even twice a day, who maintain Simpsons fan sites, who never lose at The Simpsons trivia board game, who used to watch it every chance they got, even if these days they don't watch it as much as they used to."

As a member of a generation raised on Saturday Morning cartoons, a person who grew up watching The Simpsons and who now regularly visits websites like Fark, Metafilter and Slashdot where Simpsons references run thick, I can't disagree with the author's notion of a globally-shared Simpsonian philosophy. It's clear that the show has affected our culture (or, at the very least, our Internet subculture), and that American culture has had an impact on the show in return.

Turner's book does a good job of looking at both sides of that coin and presenting his points in a way that is generally interesting and fun to read. Though there are times in the book where I found myself scratching my head, or wondering how he could have missed a favorite quote (Where, oh where, are the dogs who shoot bees from their mouths?), overall this is a solid piece of writing. Anyone who's enjoyed the show will find this enthralling reading, whether you're looking for a bit of Simpsons history, a deeper analysis of the show's impact in the present, or an idea of where the show might go in the future. The book is at times weaker, at others strong; at times unclear, at others startlingly focused; at times funny, and at other times quite serious. But then, that describes The Simpsons as well.

You can purchase Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "The back cover of Game Creation and Careers says "Reading this book is like being at a round-table discussion with more than 150 of the video game industry's most successful designers, developers and publishers." In fact, it's exactly like that, for better and for worse. Mostly worse." Read on for the rest of Fiegel's lengthy review. Game Creation and Careers: Insider Secrets from Industry Experts author Marc Saltzman pages 744 publisher New Riders rating 4 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 0735713677 summary A poorly organized series of interviews with industry-leading game designers.

Structurally, the main section of the book is broken up into four parts. Part 1 is devoted to Pre-Production, and includes chapters on Game Genres and Player Perspective, General Game Design, and the like. Part 2 is devoted to Production, with chapters on Programming Theory, AI, Game Art and Animation, User-Interface and Game Control, Sound Engineering and Music and Gaming. Part 3 takes a look at Post-Production, with information about Proper Game Testing, Tech Support and Public Relations/Marketing. Part 4, titled "How to Make it Happen," discusses DIY Shareware solutions, Breaking into the Industry, Agents and Headhunters, Design Schools, Internet resources, Conventions and Awards.

The book closes with an Appendix that includes biographies of more than 80 of the interviewees featured in the book. These are interesting but somewhat uneven: some of the artist bios are single paragraphs, while others (such as Don Bluth's) run to two pages long; some of the bios are little more than bulleted lists of games worked on, while others talk about future plans; and of course, one wonders why, if the book features more than 150 interviewees, why did nearly half of them not bother with a bio?

Words of the Prophets

The bulk of the book is devoted to material gleaned from interviews with game industry professionals. None of these is presented as its original whole; rather, bits from each are cut and pasted around, so American McGee's comments about Action Game Design, Game Industry Jobs and Storyboards are all located within the (usually) relevant chapters, rather than being presented as a whole, continuous interview.

I say "usually," because there are some rather questionable decisions made about where to place chunks of information. For example, much of the information in Chapters 15 and 16, which cover Sound Engineering and Music and Games respectively, is instead about breaking into the industry, which belongs in Chapter 21. Chapter 6 (which discusses, in part, Creating Characters) has a Note that says "See Chapter 13, 'Game Art and Animation,' for a discussion from legendary Hollywood animator Don Bluth on how to create a successful game character..." One wonders why, if it's relevant to this chapter, why it's not right here. Earlier, Chapter 5 contains a chunk of text about User Interface Design, even though Chapter 14 is supposed to be about UI Design (and in fact, this text refers to the later chapter before giving the advice). And in Chapter 5, there's a section in Gordon Walton's interview about breaking into the industry, which closes by saying "For more on breaking into the industry, sink your teeth into the meaty Chapter 21!"

Whether these were in-person or e-mail interviews is never clear, but they're all a little uneven, with some relating personal stories and others reciting information verbatim from company websites. Taken individually, many of these interviews are filled with interesting tidbits, insightful commentary and quirky bits of trivia which are worth reading. However, a good deal of the advice is not at all helpful or insightful, except perhaps superficially. For example, here are Yu Suzuki's thoughts on what separates a great game from a good game:

1. Passion.
2. Never give up.
3. Create a game carefully, thinking about the people who will play it.

Certainly good advice for creating a game. Or, with some word substitution, for writing a book, or flying a plane, or developing a cure for cancer, or becoming a Jedi Master. I think Yoda said it better: "Do, or do not. There is no try."

Much of the "advice" throughout the book is like this -- vague and meandering, and only peripherally relevant to game design. It's tempting to read the words of the designers within as if they were carved in some holy rock on the summit of Mount Radeon, but the fact is that when you look past the aura you get the impression that a lot of what they have to say is nothing but common sense. And with the way the book presents their interview excerpts their advice often comes across as, well, less than inspirational:

• Todd Howard on UI design: "Interface is everything. It's the player's way of using the game."
• Richard "Lord British" Garriott on MMORPGs: "Hire experienced personnel."
• Kevin Cloud on becoming a game artist: "You can't learn to be a computer artist unless you spend time on a computer."
• Thomas Warfield on shareware game design: "Make a good game that's fun to play."

I don't know too many people who would intentionally design a bad game that's awful to play by designing a crappy interface with inexperienced personnel without using any computers. But maybe it's just me.

Too Many Cooks

By far the most frustrating aspect of the book is the one I alluded to in my opening paragraph. Namely, that "too many cooks spoil the broth," as goes the old saying. In each chapter, advice from up to two dozen designers is presented, and in many cases one piece of advice contradicts another. In fact, in the few cases where such advice is in agreement, the author feels inclined to point it out, as on page 43, where he tells us, of Scott Miller, "Notice how closely his comments resemble George Broussard's advice? Now that's focus!" In fact, Saltzman addresses the issue himself in the opening to Chapter 14 by saying "...it's likely that you'll find some conflicting advice in areas of this book on art techniques, level design suggestions, or the best way to animate a character..." That's putting it mildly.

"Asked about the importance of design documents," says the author, "(David) Perry directly contradicts Lorne Lanning and others." He does not, however, tell us who to listen to. Nor does he tell us what to think when Ragnar Tornquist contradicts himself with "I said earlier to avoid clichés and stereotypes, but sometimes clichés and stereotypes are great ways to establish a character immediately." Later, John Slagel, asked about job-seeking, says "Don't go through a recruiter," and the author is quick to remind us that "the folks in Chapter 22, 'Game Agents and Headhunters,' may disagree!" On page 386, Greg Thomas tells us that, when it comes to game art, "It's better to make the model simpler at first and continue to add details until the limits are reached," but on page 387 Todd Howard says "Aim high... it's easier to scale down than up later on."

So do you listen to the game designer on page X who says one thing, or do you listen to the contradictory advice on page X+1? Higher or lower? Recruiter or on your own? Design document or not? Red pill or blue pill? Left or right? Up or down? The book leaves all that for the reader to decide, which raises the question: what's the point? It's difficult to understand the true intent of a book which presents such a diverse range of opinions on the topic of game design, except perhaps as an amusing diversion from actually designing games. In order to use this book as a guide to game design, one must inevitably choose which advice to follow. And as presented, that's an impossibility.

This all comes to a head in Chapter 21, "Breaking Into the Industry." "Find a job, any job," says one designer, while another says you should get a Master's degree first. Scott Miller says "with all the ideas that have been sent to me (hundreds), I've yet to see one that's worthy of turning into a game," and Sid Meier says putting together a playable demo and shopping it around is the way to go, and then Minh Le says that building a mod for an existing game is the best route to success. What all this boils down to is this: these people are not telling you what will work for you. Rather, they are telling you what worked for them. Everyone's story is different. Every path to success is different. Even the recruiters themselves disagree in Chapter 22. Melanie Cambron says "...at the early stages of one's career, using recruiting services is not the best approach," but two pages later Jeff Brunner's interview "...explains why a budding artist, programmer or game designer should consider using the services of a recruiting agency." Admittedly, this latter comment comes in the author's own words, which leads me to my next subject.

Wowza

In a book which basically amounts to a series of interviews, the author's voice repeatedly pops up with interjections-cum-interruptions that are annoying, repetitive, and just plain unnecessary. Sometimes it's a throwaway phrase, at other times just a word, but it's always a speed bump in the experience. For example, in his introduction to the book (titled, in unnecessarily casual fashion, "So, You Wanna Make Games For A Living, Huh?"), Saltzman says "... it's no wonder why the video game industry has broken the $10 billion dollar-a-year mark in the U.S. alone, which is significantly more than the revenues generated from movie box office receipts. Wowza." Wowza?

Later, Saltzman tells us to turn to Chapter 21 to read about "...breaking into 'da biz.' Whew!" On numerous occasions, he invites the reader to "pull up a chair," just in case you were reading the book while skipping rope. In Chapter 14 the reader is invited (or perhaps commanded?) to "Enjoy the following paragraphs." And page 247 cheerfully chirps "Pencils in hand?" before listing five points about Level Design. Why would we need to take notes with a pencil when the book has the notes already printed? These are obviously attempts to insert some lighthearted banter into the book, and in some places they do help to provide transitions between thoughts, but in my opinion they're nothing but an indication that the author has misjudged his audience. If they're meant to be ignored, then they shouldn't be there, and if they're truly meant to be read, then, well ... they still shouldn't be there. These little interjections come across as little more than the author jumping up and down at our round-table discussion, shouting "Don't forget me! I'm over here" or else "Don't forget about this other stuff! It's over there."

It is this latter tendency is the largest issue I have with the author's comments, in that most of them are redundant and unnecessary attempts to explain the obvious or refer to other sections of the book. From the introduction to Chapter 2, "General Game Design: Action/Arcade Games," comes this helpful tidbit:

"This chapter features designers from the action/arcade category. Chapter 3, 'General Game Design: Strategy Games,' delves into the strategy game genre. Here we go!"

Each section and interview constantly reminds us of other chapters and sections that we might want to read, like one of those old Choose Your Own Adventure Books. At the end of a section on game design in Chapter 2, we are reminded to go to Chapter 6 to read more about characters. In Chapter 6, we are encouraged to read not only about breaking into the industry in Chapter 21, but also about game design in Chapter 2. Page 187 of Chapter 6 invites the reader to "(f)ling yourself back to Chapter 2." What, right now?

This reaches its climax in Chapter 5 with "For more from the vocal Chris Taylor, jump to Chapters 6, 17 and 21. Whew!" Whew, indeed; which do we choose? Back and forth, back and forth, every page referring to another two pages. Perhaps this is meant to replicate a hyperlinked web page, or to encourage reading the book out of sequence, but in the end it merely comes across as schizophrenic and eminently unhelpful, as in this gem from Chapter 3: "In Chapter 21, 'Breaking Into the Industry,' Bill Roper offers some advice on breaking into the industry." Or how about the first sentence in Chapter 10: "Chapter 8, "Level Design," dealt with level design ..."

You think?

Also sprinkled haphazardly throughout the book are "Notes," which in theory are supposed to explain something but generally tell us nothing relevant. In many cases, the Note does little more than refer us to another chapter, as with the cross references above. An interview with Richard "Levelord" Gray in Chapter 8 mentions John Romero's interview in Chapter 20 for no apparent reason. An interview with Joel Jewett in Chapter 21, "Breaking Into the Industry", closes with a Note that Noah Falstein has more to say about breaking into the industry in Chapter 6; if it's relevant to the current chapter, why is it not in the current chapter? Most egregious, perhaps, is the Note which leads off Chapter 16, "Music and Games", informing us that we should turn back to Chapter 15 to read about Sound Engineering. But we were just there! In fact, later in Chapter 16 an interview excerpt with George "The Fat Man" Sanger leads off with the words "In Chapter 15," and ends with the words "See Chapter 15!"

OK, we get the point -- you like Chapter 15!

The Bad and The Ugly

Graphically, the book is quite unimpressive. The book's black-and-white printing turns the majority of the photographs into ugly blotches that do little to illustrate anything. For example, page 74 features a drab grayscale illustration from Age of Mythology, amusingly captioned with "Talk about gorgeous graphics!" Elsewhere, screencaps from The Sims contain illegible dialogue, images from Red Faction are indecipherable, and a bewildering photo of a parking lot on page 592 adds a certain je ne sais quoi. None of it is pretty.

There are also a few photos of the designers themselves, which range from the typical ("here's me in front of a computer") to the arrogant ("here's me holding a gun next to two hot chicks") to the silly ("here's me in a bunny suit"). Most of these have nothing to do with the text, the book, or anything at all that I can think of. A picture of George "The Fat Man" Sanger is accompanied by a caption informing us that the snakes on his suit were all hand-embroidered. Objection, your honor -- how is this relevant?

Relevance is also a big problem with the artwork; as in, there mostly isn't any to speak of. In but a few cases is the art both appropriate to the text as well as interesting and/or useful (as with the sketches from Twisted Metal: Black on page 35). Some of the artwork is obvious promotional art, as when a pre-rendered still from Diablo II is passed off as a shot from the game, and some of it is merely irrelevant to the text it accompanies, as when two stills of Oddworld's Abe accompany text that talks about how unique his friend Munch is. Later, two random shots from Unreal are dropped in with a caption discussing puzzle design in the middle of a chapter on level design. Then a discussion about User Interface design is accompanied by two shots from The Sims, bereft of any sign of its pie menu interface, the only thing that would have made the images relevant. In Chapter 21, "Breaking Into the Industry," what will you find stuck in between interviews with Donny Thorley of Day 1 Studios and Dave Davis of Electronic Arts? Inexplicably, four screenshots from Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto, Vice City, and a caption that talks about Chapter 19, "Public Relations and Marketing."

The book could also use some updating and at least one more round of editing; though few and far between, there are some embarrassing mistakes to be found. Page 25 mentions "Warcraft: Diablo," and page 242 reverses the name of a popular mod by referring to "Condition Zero: Counter Strike." Other errors are more egregious: page 138 talks about Dungeon Siege 2, slated for a 2004 release, but page 142 tells us that the same game is "not confirmed by the company at the time of this writing." Later, the reader is invited to "peruse Namco's 2002 lineup at www.namco.com"; if Namco still has their 2002 lineup online, they're in trouble. And page 155 tells us that Everquest is "something 400,000 people enjoy almost daily [and for $10 a month!]" while the very next page contains a caption about the same game informing us that "(m)ore than 450,000 gamers are paying $13 a month ..." At that rate, by the time you finish paging through the book, everyone in the world will be paying $1500 a month to play Everquest. Which I guess isn't so inconceivable, come to think of it.

It's also worth mentioning the Cover, Table of Contents and Index here, all of which are poorly organized. The cover is an awful purple mess which lists a number of the interviewees, a list which continues on into the inside front cover of the book. The Table of Contents then gives us more lists of names, showing us who's interviewed in each chapter. Two pages later we are presented with yet another two-page list of the same names. We're 23 pages in and we've seen the list three times. This might be excusable if the Table of Contents was at all helpful, but it's not. Every sub-sub-sub-section of the book is listed; in case you were wondering what page the blank User Interface Detail #2 entry of the Master Design Document Template was on, it's page 225.

Then, of course, there's the 34-page long Index, which includes entries for each interviewee as well as topical entries followed by lists of interviewees in each chapter. Just in case it wasn't confusing enough, the individual interviewee names are organized alphabetically by last name, but their entries under each topic are alphabetized by their first name. And for added fun, how about the fact that the interviews within each chapter are not presented alphabetically at all (either by first name or last)? In sum, there are some 60 pages of the book -- nearly 10 percent -- devoted to repeated lists of names organized differently each time.

Conclusions

In the Introduction, Saltzman points out that this book is an extension and expansion of the popular and commercially successful Game Design: Secrets of the Sages. I've not read that book, but I can't help but think that perhaps an expansion was not the best idea. In some cases, less is more, and this book, while interesting, helpful and at times enlightening, really would have been a whole lot more with a whole lot less of some things. Removing unnecessary banter, unhelpful Table of Contents and Index entries, the ubiquitous page cross-references and some completely useless photographs would make this book 100 pages lighter and a lot more worth reading.

As it stands, the book is worth a look only if you're really interested in what these "gods of gaming" have to say about the industry, or you just want some light reading material to round out your collection. It's fun to hear Scott Miller trash Lara Croft as having "a generic, valueless name that says nothing about her personality" just a few pages before Toby Gard talks about her in glowing terms, but is it helpful? To borrow a Fark tag: Unlikely.

If you're looking for information on how to get into the industry, or any insights into designing and developing better games, there are better books out there, including some others by New Riders (helpfully referenced at the back of this book) which are more focused and better structured. And if you're looking for a magic-bullet solution to landing an industry job, you're not going to find it in here (if anywhere at all). When you boil down the advice in the book and pick out the few things these 150 experts agree on, it comes down to this: go to college, practice your skills, take a job in QA or testing to get your feet in the door, and play lots of games. Outside of that, whatever works for you is what will work for you.

Ultimately, the best piece of advice in the book comes in an anecdote about Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, who signed a fan's Nintendo Power Magazine with the following advice: "To Jeremie, Play Outside on Sunny Days, Shigeru Miyamoto."

You can purchase Game Creation and Careers: Insider Secrets from Industry Experts from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Aeonite (Michael Fiegel) writes "Mark Jeffrey is probably best known to Slashdotters as an online media entrepreneur and one of the co-founders (along with Mike Maerz and Jim Bumgardner) of The Palace, an avatar-based chat system popular in the late 1990s. Jeffrey is not to be confused with Neal Stephenson, though both men have websites featuring clockwork imagery, goatees, and novels which contain references to Sumerian mythology -- Stephenson's Snow Crash and Jeffrey's first novel, The Pocket and the Pendant. From a distance, one might be inclined to believe that similarities to Stephenson's own work are more than cosmetic: Jeffrey thanks Stephenson on the Acknowledgments page of his novel (along with Stephen R. Donaldson and Carl Jung, among others), and one Lulu.com review (mentioned in a press release) describes The Pocket and the Pendant as being 'like Stargate, Harry Potter, Snow Crash and the old Land of the Lost rolled into one.'" Read on for the rest of Fiegel's review. The Pocket and the Pendant author Mark Jeffrey pages 220 publisher Lulu.com rating 5 reviewer Michael Fiegel ISBN 1411613236 summary In a world where time has no meaning, one boy stands alone against the forces of darkness.

In my estimation, that's a lot like saying that chocolate chip cookies are "like flour, sugar, chocolate chips and vanilla rolled into one." Both statements are true, in part, though they leave out a lot of other ingredients, and mention some (Snow Crash and vanilla, respectively) which proportionally make up very little of the overall batter.

Granted, I know what the reviewer was thinking of when they wrote that assessment of the book; namely, the Sumerian myth. But beyond that, it's misleading to suggest that a Snow Crash fan would also enjoy The Pocket and the Pendant. I'd go so far as to say quite the opposite. Snow Crash was a Cyberpunk novel loaded with heavy doses of socio-political and religious satire, violence and sexual imagery, among other things. The Pocket and the Pendant is a fantasy novel that contains no overt satire, little violence outside of a few bruises, and nothing sexier than the word "girlfriend." To draw comparison between the two is akin to comparing Star Trek and Star Wars: about all they have in common is stars. One is science-fiction, the other's science-fantasy; one takes place in the future, the other "long, long ago"; one's got Wil Wheaton, the other's got Natalie Portman; one's designed for adults (Seven of Nine, the Borg), and one's focused on a younger audience (Jar-Jar Binks, the Ewoks).

Given that dichotomy, The Pocket and the Pendant falls squarely in the Star Wars/fantasy half of the speculative fiction genre. As a longtime fan of Star Wars, I can't say that's a bad thing. There's much that's good about this book, and as a first novel it shines far brighter than many works I've laid eyes on. However, there are some uneven spots that must be acknowledged along the way.

Humble Beginnings

After a brief prelude which sets up the action to follow we are introduced to the novel's protagonist, Max Quick. Max is introduced as being "a very strange little boy," a phrase that bothered me the first time I read it. As we will learn just a few dozen words later, Max is twelve years old, as are his peers, who are also, time and again, referred to as "little boys and girls." When I think of someone who's a "little boy" I think of the teenage Amidala in The Phantom Menace calling the 8-year-old Anakin "a funny little boy." I do not think of twelve-year-olds as "little children," but rather as pre-teens well on the way to adulthood: Natalie Portman's Matilda in Leon, who is twelve going on 32; Nabokov's twelve-year old Lolita, four-feet-ten in one sock; the drug-using pre-teens and barely-teens in Kids and Thirteen.

In the world of The Pocket and the Pendant, however, twelve-year-olds truly are "little boys and girls," possessed of a wide-eyed innocence that, while capable of being tainted and turned, is nevertheless omnipresent in the mannerisms and language of the main characters. Mention of "girlfriends" causes blushing, and one twelve-year-old character uses the term "tummy" and repeatedly refers to her mother as "Mommy." Consider the following dialogue:

" Can you hear me?"
"Yes!" came the little girl's voice from somewhere above, now sounding more hopeful. "Oh, yes! Whoever you are, can you help me, please?"
"Yes, I will, I promise," Max called back. "What apartment are you in?"
"912," she yelled back, "The door's open! Hurry! I'm scared!"

The only child in the book who's portrayed as truly malicious and evil is Ace, described as a "big kid" by the author in a clear effort to put at least several years between him and the "little twelve-year-olds." While it's true that there are some young antagonists who have reverted to barbarity, even their actions seem more like a foolish game than true maliciousness, bringing to mind scenes from Lord of the Flies or Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome or even Peter Pan, kids turned savage not by choice, but by circumstance. Sasha, one of the most vicious-tongued of these savage "Serpents & Mermaids," even joins the other "good little children" on their quest after a time.

In all, there are four heroes in the novel, all presumably in the same age range, all "just four little kids" as described by our hero, Max Quick, himself. He's accompanied by Casey Cole, his female sidekick (and not his girlfriend, as he insists); Ian Keating, a British transplant, here playing the role of Spock to Quick's Kirk; and, of course, Sasha, who comes in late and serves mostly as a plot device, conveniently tripping or falling into trouble when necessary. As to the plot ...

All The Time In The World

The action begins for our heroes as it ends for everyone else on the planet: on April 9th at 3:38, in the middle of a solar eclipse. That's the moment at which time itself stops. Mothers are frozen in the middle of making breakfast, fathers are paralyzed as they drive to work, and children are stuck fast as they head home not to play GTA San Andreas, but to eat lemon and jelly sandwiches and play hide-and-seek (for such is the world of Max Quick). In fact, it's not just people who are affected, but presumably the entire universe itself: the wind stops blowing, flocks of birds halt in mid-flight, and waves become frozen on the ocean, each immobile and essentially as hard as stone.

As it turns out, not everyone is stuck in time. There's Max, of course, who quickly discovers that while the rest of the world is stopped, he has gained respectively supernatural powers, able to "whoosh" about with great speed and hear across great distances since everything else in the world has fallen silent and still. He soon rescues Casey, who has discovered two powers: first, the ability to "fall inside" mirrors in order to escape from danger; and second, the ability to rub objects to "heat them up" and unfreeze them from time. This discovery leads to one of the more unintentionally amusing lines in the book if you're an adult:

Everything seems to be like that: slow and sticky -- but I figured it out: if you rub it and heat it up, it comes loose and then you can use it." She beamed.

The unwitting double-entendre there makes me question the assessment that The Pocket and the Pendant is "a fast-paced adventure sure to thrill young and old alike." Clearly, the author intends this line to be read from the perspective of an innocent child, discovering a secret and describing it in perfectly obvious and appropriate terms, but I think it is likely that only a child (or "young adult," as the library likes to call them) will be able to take that at face value. But on with the story...

Max and Sasha, in an attempt to uncover the mystery behind the stopped time, soon encounter a rogue band of youth gone wild, which leads to a very clever battle set inside a time-stopped bank of fog, and the eventual capture of our heroes. Luckily, they discover a disgruntled member of the gang (Ian) who is able to help them escape via a magical book-cum-"deus-ex-machina". At first, it seems strange that the novel interjects a magical tome into what had previously been a more science-oriented storyline, and stranger still that the characters all seem to just accept this magical object at face value. But as the plot unfolds, this becomes more acceptable to the reader; as we discover, not only is there a reason for magic and science to exist side-by-side within the story, but there's a reason why the main character seems capable of embracing it all without questioning it.

As the story evolves, we encounter more quantum-bending books, a Nam-shub (Sumerian incantation), UFOs, an entire army of alien centurions, and an insidious plot that involves a rogue planet, ancient Egyptian and Sumerian "gods" and the interference of Snow Crash's favorite god, Enki, one of the novel's most interesting characters despite the fact that he (and, perhaps, the author) seems to believe that all the world's problems can be solved by giving troubled children a bowl of ice cream (this happens three times in the course of the novel).

Enki gets some of the more interesting (and some of the more adult) dialogue in the novel, though I hesitate to use the term "dialogue" since it's mostly "monologue." Enki is not alone, however. Heroes, villains, diary entries and side characters all spout off great gouts of plot for pages and pages, at times explaining backstory, at other times (as with Enki) seeming to speak the author's own philosophical beliefs as they attempt to justify thousands of years of history, archaeology, religion and philosophy in one neat little storyline. One entire chapter is devoted to Enki's reconciliation of Sumerian mythology and Biblical references to Adam, the Nephilim, the Flood, Babel and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. Not that it's done poorly here; on the contrary, it's done as tidily as Stephenson does in Snow Crash (which is to say, solidly enough to serve the plot, but probably not enough to stand up to actual scrutiny in the "real world"). Surely the RIAA would disagree, however, with Ian's concise assessment that good and evil are akin to users who share on P2P networks, and those who do not (respectively).

The Pocket and the Pendant

As Enki explains to our heroes, "The Pocket" of the title is the little "pocket of time" within which the characters find themselves through the course of the novel. To reveal more about the nature of this "pocket" is to spoil parts of the story, but suffice to say that it goes far deeper than your typical "time has stopped" trope, and involves weaving the concept of neural networks, the nature of consciousness and quantum mechanics into what Enki dubs "Dreamtime."

Various objects called omphalos -- special amethysts, diamonds, rubies, lapis lazuli, emeralds, etc. -- "contain echoes of the very Dreamtime itself", allowing users to alter reality in various ways. Some omphalos are used to allow users to travel faster, others to communicate across great distances. "The Pocket" was created by an omphalos called the Chrononomicon, and "The Pendant" is another omphalos which the novel's villains are searching for within "The Pocket." It has the capability of affecting the entire human race, and whether or not they can be stopped before achieving their goal is ultimately on the shoulders of Max Quick and his three friends. If the heroes succeed, the world will be saved from evil. If they fail, all humankind will be enslaved, just like the band Planet Furious, who are, late in the book, "thawed out" and forced to perform onstage for an army of villains in what has to be one of the silliest scenes in the novel.

Not that there's anything particularly wrong with "silly" in a children's book. Scenes like this are bound to capture the imagination of younger readers. But adult readers are going to have a hard time grasping the relevance of "Johnny Jupiter, Sophisto, Frankie Mercury and Sid Venus" in a novel which, pages earlier, was going on about quantum mechanics and the nature of reality.

Who's The Audience?

This issue is addressed in this review over and over again, precisely because of the author's apparent intent:

"The novel is written for both adults and young adult readers alike," says Jeffrey in a press release about the novel. "I consciously wrote in a fast-paced and humorous style accessible to both audiences, yet didn't want to create something 'kiddie'.

All told, before the book is out, we'll have encountered references to ancient Sumeria, Judeo-Christian mythology, quantum physics, time travel and astronomy -- heavy, weighty topics that will probably fly over the heads of many children reading the book. We'll also have encountered children calling each other names, characters who speak in "kiddie" language to one another, a "Beep-o-tronik" cell phone and a "Vicious Cycles 'Sportstervarius' motorcycle." These two things -- adult language, and childish language -- exist not together, but side by side, separate and noticeably unequal. Consider the following, from page 180 and 181, respectively:

It was the same kind of feeling one got looking at an Escher print. It was numinous, chthonic.
The gestalt was one of controlled geometric chaos -- triangular, dodecahedral, octagonal and tetrahedral shapes in every direction.

"...I forgive you." She paused a moment and then added, "I even forgive you for what will happen to my Mommy."

The novel certainly has pieces that are appropriate for older readers, and it definitely has pieces that are intended for younger readers, but I am hard pressed to say that it can appeal as a whole to either group. Due to the nature of the story and the fact that the protagonists are children, my gut instinct is to suggest it's definitely a children's book. I can see a child enjoying the book much more easily than I can see an adult finding it all fulfilling. Slashdot is mentioned on page 67, but I don't think the typical Slashdot reader would find the novel really and truly fulfilling. However, their children probably would, especially if mom or dad was there to explain what "numinous" or "chthonic" meant.

This is not to say that adults cannot enjoy such novels. Many a children's novel has been embraced by adults: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, A Wrinkle In Time and The Hobbit spring immediately to mind, and of course there's the ubiquitous Harry Potter and much of Piers Anthony's work, especially the oft-forgotten Mode books. Such novels contain worlds where youthful innocence is threatened on the path toward experience, and children (or hobbits) are forced to grow up faster than they might like in order to save themselves and others. The Pocket and the Pendant is at home with these books, not with Stargate or Snow Crash. And that's good company to be in.

Nuts & Bolts

It's worth mentioning the book's layout, at least in passing. The number of lines varies from page-to-page, with some pages leaving a more comfortable 1/8" white gap above the rule at the bottom, and others cramming an extra line in there, seemingly at random, but likely due to the somewhat inconsistent spacing between sections within each chapter, some of which are quite wide, others narrower. Rather than being fully-justified (with even edges on both sides), the book is merely left-justified, with ragged right edges. While not a mortal sin, it's at least venial, making the text hard to read in some places where words sorely in need of hyphenation are instead dropped to a new line:

For his part, Max was surprised to find that there was something disturbingly
familiar about Mr. Siren also. Then, Max caught a flash, a snippet
of...something. He blinked in confusion and tried to concentrate.

From a stylistic standpoint, one annoyance is that the novel's main villain has a habit of speaking in pseudo-archaic English, with "thee," "thou" and "thy" peppering her speech, presumably in an effort to make her seem older and more alien. While I would normally consider this as egregious a sin as George Lucas burdening Jar-Jar Binks with Jamaican patois, I will let Jeffrey off the hook here since he has one of the characters question this very issue late in the novel, in a rather amusing scene.

Far worse, however is the author's unfortunate habit of liberally sprinkling his text with italics for emphasis. I cannot find a single page in the book that does not contain at least one or two italicized words. In general, one uses italics as a means of emphasis only sparingly, and the overuse in this novel leaves the reader a bit seasick, riding a roller-coaster of emphasized words up and down, up and down. Much of the time, one can chalk this up to the gushing exuberance of an excited speaker, but at times, such emphasis seems wholly out of place within the context of a given sentence:

Oh, it is you, I knew it was," she said, shaking her head. "But how can it be? I don't understand ... but I have no doubt: it's you alright."

Overall the book is well-edited, with only a handful of typos to be found throughout. One of the most amusing, repeated twice, is to be found on page 201 near the end of the novel, where a character unfortunately serves ice cream not in "bowls" but in "bowels." That's one your kids might actually notice, and laugh uproariously at.

Unintentional potty humor -- some things are funny no matter how old you are.

In Closing

For those who enjoy many of the other books mentioned above, The Pocket and the Pendant is a good, fun read. However, it's hard to get past the notable imbalance between the book's "adult" and "kiddie" elements. It will be interesting to see where the author takes his characters should he write a sequel to this novel, and if he's able to more thoroughly blend the weightier language with a consistently child-friendly storyline.

The best advice for those who are unsure of whether or not this is for them is to check it out themselves. A free preview of this novel, including the first two chapters, is available in .pdf format for immediate download from print-on-demand-publisher Lulu.com and www.pocketandpendant.com. The P&P website also includes cover art, news and updates about the book, a blog, and several other reviews.

You can purchase the Pocket and the Pendant from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.