Rating: 
Summary: art? sport? other?
Review: "If architecture is frozen music, then videogames are liquid architecture."Poole gives us a series of essays that take a serious look at videogames. What kind of artform are they? How have they drawn influence from, and influenced, more traditional artforms like movies and novels? Not all of Poole's insights are revolutionary, but he's obviously a bright guy who's not afraid to drag out the heavy hitters (Adorno, Wittgenstein) when he needs to. Nevertheless "Trigger Happy" has a light touch; it's easy to read and quite entertaining. Poole isn't just an armchair theorist; the games that he holds in high regard (e.g. Metal Gear Solid, Wipeout XL, Space Invaders) are all standouts, and he writes about them with obvious affection. I particularly enjoyed the section where Poole contemplates future possibilities for gaming. He points out that, just as advancements in art through the ages were initially characterized by increasingly 'realistic' representation techniques (e.g. vanishing horizon, perspective), so are videogame graphics advancements characterized by increased realism. But while art branched off into abstraction, impressionism, etc., videogames have so far avoided similar exploration. To put it in a nutshell-- why aren't there more games that let you move around in an MC Escher type space? The hilarious analysis of laser weapon verisimilitude in videogames is priceless.
Rating: 
Summary: brilliantly original
Review: A fantastic story of the "aesthetics" of video games - what makes them an artform that draws influences from cinema, art history (yes!), older games and traditional narrative, while becoming something new and "revolutionary" at the same time. This guy Poole is obviously a gamer, but he is also a brilliant cultural critic & I was constantly surprised and amazed at the references and parallels he draws, from Sophocles and Plato to Albrecht Durer and Walter Benjamin. At times it's a little dense, but its worth perservering to follow his trains of thought. Should be fascinating to anyone who cares about where modern culture is going, let alone games themselves. This is one of the best books I've ever read. I'd give it six stars if I could :-)
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating trip down memory lane
Review: An amazing little book, written in a unique, meandering style. As mentioned by the other reviewers, the breadth of this author's source material is impressive. And the constant references to all those wonders of my childhood (from Tir Na Nog to Vanguard to Robotron) are a delight.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't go far enough
Review: An intelligent, broad ranging discussion of videogames. Poole is right to regard videogames as a medium, and one that needs to be evaluated on its own terms instead of compared with books or movies. He brings in an intriguing array of references on art, semiotics, literary theory and other topics to the discussion, and his writing is accessible and smooth.
The flaw in this book is focussing too narrowly on twitch games, mostly the combat/exploration games like Tomb Raider or Metal Gear Solid. Poole can't be bothered with god-games like Populous or Sim-City or pure exploration-puzzle games like Myst, and says as much. He misses out on a huge realm of other styles of game and playing experience. This is a shame, because Poole looks like he has the intellectual chops to write a comprehensive book on this subject.
Pool is on to something in the last chapter, when he theorizes that the next frontier is making the player feel responsible for his decisions in the game world. You might feel bad when Aeris buys it in Final Fantasy VII, but it was in a cut scene so you don't feel responsible because it was beyond your control.
For the reasons Poole discusses earlier, this is hard to do in an adventure-style game. If a character dies in a cut scene, it isn't your fault. If she dies in gameplay, you just keep playing it through until she lives. (Kirk didn't accept the no-win situation; why should you?)
However, this is where his distaste for god-games trips him up. Players of Civilization or other management games don't have easy replay buttons. Anybody whose sim-city burns because they under-funded the fire department knows all about actions and consequences. We care about a place if we build it. We don't care about a place if we just wander around shooting things in it.
Also, instilling responsibility in games may be a dead end. Arguably, the whole point of play is to avoid responsibility. Play is a separate realm in which success or failure don't matter in the rest of world. Creating consequences for our actions in a game world would make it too much like work.
This may be why some people find on-line games so addictive. They become like work, instead of play, because there are consequences if you don't play hard enough. You can let down the other players, and your enemies can attack what you have created.
Poole doesn't write about on-line multi-player games, because they barely existed when he wrote this, only a couple of years ago. I think he could write another intriguing book on the subject, if he would just take his eyes off Lara Croft and take a walk through Riven.
Rating: 
Summary: Very lacking
Review: Despite the other reviews of this book. I found it to be very lacking to the point it didn't say very much at all. It tried to cover too much ground with very minor arguments / evidence, also with obviously related material spread amongst different chapters. It basically appears to be much more of the author focusing on his personal favourite games (in particular Lara Croft / Tombraider which gets mentioned more than any other game in the book - she even gets a quote - 'Aha', alongside Plato and TS Eliot). The author admits to not playing video games for an extended period of time as well, and his biases clearly show (at least he actually mentions that he finds god-games tedious). I don't think he was really the right person to write this sort of book. Personally, I found it difficult to keep reading due to lack of interest - despite the writing style is basic and easy to read. My advice is to just read the last chapter in the bookstore.
Rating:
Summary: A bit more please.
Review: February 11, 2003 I'm a game player, but nowhere near the enthusiast that
many young men (and women, says author Poole) have
become today. I don't own an expensive home system,
unless you count my computer, but I am old enough to
remember most of the video game revolution of the 70's.
I found `Trigger Happy' a little too dedicated to the
examination of form (and only a few sorts of forms at
that). Some of Poole's conclusions about the psychology behind
game-playing and game-evolution are interesting, but others
are downright tedious. (The evolution and complex
significance of the power up?) More interesting areas are
available that he jumps over, unless a companion effort is
in the making. There should be more testimony here. From
gamers, addicts, designers, doctors, marketers, Hollywood,
you name it. Video games are huge, will become more huge, and might
some day begin playing us, who knows? As a person with a
possible future endlessly jumping over flaming barrels, I'd
like something a little more substantial.
Rating:
Summary: A bit more please.
Review: February 11, 2003 I'm a game player, but nowhere near the enthusiast that
many young men (and women, says author Poole) have
become today. I don't own an expensive home system,
unless you count my computer, but I am old enough to
remember most of the video game revolution of the 70's.
I found 'Trigger Happy' a little too dedicated to the
examination of form (and only a few sorts of forms at
that). Some of Poole's conclusions about the psychology behind
game-playing and game-evolution are interesting, but others
are downright tedious. (The evolution and complex
significance of the power up?) More interesting areas are
available that he jumps over, unless a companion effort is
in the making. There should be more testimony here. From
gamers, addicts, designers, doctors, marketers, Hollywood,
you name it. Video games are huge, will become more huge, and might
some day begin playing us, who knows? As a person with a
possible future endlessly jumping over flaming barrels, I'd
like something a little more substantial.
Rating:
Summary: Computer game aesthetics
Review: Good lord! Who wrote this clap-trap? Being involved with games and the games industry for over 20 years, I found this book neither informative or accurate. As dry a read as 'Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames' is, it is infinitely more competant than this book. Poole's blind observations of his favorite games sound irritatingly like the kid who hangs out at the local game store spewing his views of what's great and what's garbage. His bias runs throughout the book and proves that Poole has no real comprehension of this business. Do yourself a favor and buy either 'Phoenix' or 'The First Quarter' instead of this doorstop.
Rating: 
Summary: Steven Poole missed the boat big time!
Review: Good lord! Who wrote this clap-trap? Being involved with games and the games industry for over 20 years, I found this book neither informative or accurate. As dry a read as 'Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames' is, it is infinitely more competant than this book. Poole's blind observations of his favorite games sound irritatingly like the kid who hangs out at the local game store spewing his views of what's great and what's garbage. His bias runs throughout the book and proves that Poole has no real comprehension of this business. Do yourself a favor and buy either 'Phoenix' or 'The First Quarter' instead of this doorstop.
Rating:
Summary: The best book out there, period.
Review: If you love games like I do - I've been playing 'em all my life, and developing 'em for 6 years - you *need* to read this book. I've never read such a fascinating angle on gameplaying, situating video games in an illuminating context among art, cinema and books, and doing some really excellent thinking about how they work on your mind. This book was like a breath of fresh air to me. I gotta defend the author too against the factually incorrect attacks by a reviewer below. The reviewer says: "this man touches very lightly the fact that videogames came into fruition and refinement in Japan". Hey, Poole rightly points out that Taito saved the gaming industry with Space Invaders, he calls Miyamoto "the god of videogames", and most of the games he says are great - Metal Gear Solid, Zelda 64, etc - are Japanese. What more do you want? Jeez, of course this reviewer says he didn't even finish reading the book! Don't listen to him. Buy Trigger Happy: you won't regret it.
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