Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon

Rating:
Summary: Not for True Scholars of Video Games
Review: As a scholar of video game research and a graduate student in Anthropology I was extremely curious and happy to get a copy of this book to include in my library. I was however extremely disappointed. This book presented numerous problems and oversights of video games in general. Although there are many areas covered, none of them are covered in any serious depth or scholarly attention. Too often, Berger makes personal comments (typically negative) without backing them up. When comparing books to video games and other narrative forms, he really splits hairs in trying to bring out differences. His compartmentalization on the subject is extremely artificial and disturbing. The typos and spelling errors are enough to keep a reader frustrated. Even if you are not a scholar of video games, I would not recommend this book. There are numerous other books out there that are better written and look at video games on a much more even level.

Rating:
Summary: Not for True Scholars of Video Games
Review: As a scholar of video game research and a graduate student in Anthropology I was extremely curious and happy to get a copy of this book to include in my library. I was however extremely disappointed. This book presented numerous problems and oversights of video games in general. Although there are many areas covered, none of them are covered in any serious depth or scholarly attention. Too often, Berger makes personal comments (typically negative) without backing them up. When comparing books to video games and other narrative forms, he really splits hairs in trying to bring out differences. His compartmentalization on the subject is extremely artificial and disturbing. The typos and spelling errors are enough to keep a reader frustrated. Even if you are not a scholar of video games, I would not recommend this book. There are numerous other books out there that are better written and look at video games on a much more even level.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing really new here...
Review: As scholar of popular culture, I was understandably curious to see what Berger had to say. Unfortunately, I came away disapointed. This is a book that has a few good points, some problematic points as well as some parts that are pretty uninteresting; however, Berger has done his research. He cites several interesting sources, and for that fact alone it is worth checking out.

Berger goes into some great depth comparing video games to books and of course, as so often the case, he finds video games lacking. He discussed the things that books can do, such as identification, interiority, leaving things up to the imagination of the reader, and stops by saying that video games do none of these things as well. He neglects to discuss any of the things that video games do better than books, which is an odd omission considering that this book is about video games, not books...

While I disagree with many of his conclusions, Berger does do a good job of going over many of the general issues of studying video games. I feel that one might be better served by photocopying his bibliography and tracking down his sources, but as in introduction and overview it does a good job. The production of the book is a bit shoddy as I found numerous spelling errors and problems with the formatting which distracted from the message of the book. This is not a bad book, but it is not a great book. If you are already a video game scholar, I don't know that you will find anything interesting in this book. If you are interested in studying video games in an academic way, read Trigger Happy by Steven Poole instead.

Rating:
Summary: ... universal communication and digital lifestyle
Review: In my mind's eye, while walking the wooded hills of southern Indiana on any sunny day, I can viscerally imagine being immersed in a natural cathedral-like theatre of abruptly changing Light and Shadows with senses like phototropic sensations common to video games. Perhaps there are mnemonic roots present in the human experience responding to various "natural theatres" of luminous immersion, such as illustrated in traditional media by the atmospheric landscapes of the Hudson River School (and the Hoosier Group) of painters. As a young research assistant at the Army's Human Engineering Laboratories in 1960, I briefly sampled a prototype trial for training of human interaction control of missile guidance with a souped-up oscilloscope/CRT visualizing system. The accelerating feedback on the screen of joystick control, produced the "wow effect" very much like the rush consumers would experience in the primitive video games of the '70s and later [alas, my eye doctor soon after suggested I had been "working too close to microwave transmission"].

From repose to the wandering mind and through its disconnects, the subject can feel as though navigating through a metadata atmosphere not unlike a video game interface for the 9 year-old player. Video games are not just a fantasy theater, as some fear, for the furious expression of male adolescent rage fueling new ideologies of terror, misogyny and brutalization throughout the modern world. In our "modern times", some groundbreaking museum venues are beginning to provide a quiet, safe harbor for contemplating and celebrating the best of this new American media, even while acknowledging the fears emanating from among its dark shadows that can be millions of times more [exponentially] powerful than the limitations we've known of the Gutenberg effect. For example, Rochelle Slovin, the Director of the American Museum of the Moving Image (ammi.org), has pointed us along an insightful path beginning with "Hot Circuits: A Video Arcade" 1989, then continuing through "Expanded Entertainment" 1996, "Computer Space" 1998, and " Digital Media" 2002, (see elsewhere "The Medium of the Video Game" by Mark Wolf, 2002). Ms. Slovin's new path markers extend an historic trail of kinetic luminism tracing back through recent television and 100-year old movies to the magic lantern Phantasmagoria of the Renaissance and to the Shadow Puppetry Theatre in Bali 1000 years earlier.

This slim volume by Arthur Asa Berger, a prolific writer, is a serious look at biological, psychological and social significance ands provides a social perspective of sexuality not usually found. For instance, his comments "Lara Croft, scopophilia and the male gaze..." frames a valuable context of sexuality. Let me suggest that Berger in this essay, like too many reporting scholars, doesn't always clearly distinguish between anecdotal references and more organized research statistics. "A neurologist ... has suggested that video games may affect [not effect?] changes in neural pathways in players in a manner somewhat like biofeedback ...". "This 'conditioning' must be seen, of course, as an unintended consequence..." This is highly recommended for critical reading because its sometimes seemingly shallow predispositions do reveal the underlying, crucial, fundamental questions. So, as critical readers of Berger's essay, we need to tiptoe through and dodge around the rhetorical thickets. In summary, we see Berger's essay frequently posits whether video gaming is alienating. His conclusions, anecdotal and otherwise, put into perspective that this is indeed the Question to be centered in the limelight. But the reader can find enough evidence elsewhere in Berger's musings that the power of the enveloping digital lifestyle may in fact be in the connecting, involving and the socializing of shared values. The reader might also look at the "Ultimate History of Video Games" by Steven Kent, 2001 for putting David Grossman's fiery challenge to video game violence (Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill) into an expanded context.

"What-if" in twenty years a 9 year-old kid comfortably uses a common, personal digital tool that is a million times more powerful than that NASA used to put a man on the moon? Let's reflect on the Gutenberg Effect. Victor Hugo might now opine about the invention of our digital lifestyle (instead of the printing press) as "... thought is more imperishable than ever; it is volatile, irresistible, and indestructible. It pervades the air... Now she is a flock of birds, flies abroad to all the four winds of heaven, and occupies at once all the points of air and of space...".

Rating:
Summary: Book Sorely Lacking
Review: The back of this book says that it begins with the tracing of the evolution of video games. However, any book that includes a history of games and doesn't include the names Baer, Bushnell, and Atari, is sorely lacking. Also, it would have been nice had Berger read the two definitive books on video games; Leonard Herman's Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames and Steven Kent's Ultimate History of Video Games. Instead, his source was J.C. Herz's Joystick Nation, a book that has been poorly received by the video gaming community.

Rating:
Summary: Author is completely new to video games!
Review: this book is very simplistic, and tends to make large claims whilst discussing only the most basic details. It's clear that the author is very new to video games, and may only have been introduced to a few games for writing this books. Many times, he will make the most obvious observations e.g. a scifi-themed game has a narrative similar to a scifi movie - and write 3 or 4 pages about obvious observation.
Also writes in a rather old-fashioned way .

Rating:
Summary: Clumsy and shallow
Review: This is a clumsy work most notable for what it lacks rather than what it presents. Despite handy bullet points at the beginning of each chapter, one finds that half way through a chapter one must start again after the author reveals a hidden limitation such as only being concerned with games for children.

I was disappointed with the way Berger allows his personal suppositions to dominate his arguments without any basis in either research or the existing literature (and occasionally with no basis is common sense). At one point Berger claims that playing video games means you are not interacting with family and friends; despite that he earlier included a set-up cost analysis for a system with two controllers (for 2 players).

This book is of little academic interest, but may be suitable for media scare-mongering or to back up the dogma of certain interest groups.

Rating:
Summary: Clumsy and shallow
Review: This is a clumsy work most notable for what it lacks rather than what it presents. Despite handy bullet points at the beginning of each chapter, one finds that half way through a chapter one must start again after the author reveals a hidden limitation such as only being concerned with games for children.

I was disappointed with the way Berger allows his personal suppositions to dominate his arguments without any basis in either research or the existing literature (and occasionally with no basis is common sense). At one point Berger claims that playing video games means you are not interacting with family and friends; despite that he earlier included a set-up cost analysis for a system with two controllers (for 2 players).

This book is of little academic interest, but may be suitable for media scare-mongering or to back up the dogma of certain interest groups.

Rating:
Summary: Games as a literary, artistic, and entertainment genre
Review: Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon is a scholarly and critical look at video and computer games as a literary, artistic, and entertainment genre, with the same potentials for classic storytelling and educational use as books, films, and other media. Of course, video and computer games also have notorious potential for cliches, sensationalized violence, or possibly even pornography, just as books, magazines, and movies do. Video Games is a most carefully researched and critical essay, not looking to pass judgement but rather to inform, disseminate and theorize about the relationship of video games to narratives, to culture as a whole, and to biology, psychology and sociology. The individual video games of Myst, Riven, Tomb Raider, and Half-Life in particular are scrutinized in this compelling, sensible, and fascinating treatise on a subject rarely given proper academic scrutiny. Video Games is highly recommended students of American popular culture, as well as for all non-specialist general readers who are video game lovers with an interest in learning and thinking a bit more about the true nature of their passion.