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TRIGGER HAPPY

VIDEO GAMES AND THE FUTURE OF ENTERTAINMENT

A perky exploration of the semiotics of video games—if that’s what readers have been waiting for.

Despite its title, this is not a diatribe against video games, but rather a history that finds unappreciated nuances and aesthetic importance in them.

An unapologetic fan, British journal Poole champions video games as an emergent art form, asserting that “the player’s response to a well-designed videogame is . . . the same sort of response he or she has to a film, or to a painting: it is an aesthetic one.” Lamenting that semioticians and art historians have failed to take their presence seriously, the author rushes heroically into the breach. He traces the evolution of the games from their primordial ancestors (Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, and Pac-Man), creating a typology, a critical vocabulary, and a canon to distinguish truly great games from mediocre ones. He notes the formation of distinct genres in the early 1980s, including “exploration games” (posing spatial puzzles), the “beat-’em-up” (in which players fight one another using martial arts, magical powers, or fantastic weapons), “God games” (simulating the construction of cities or nations), wargames, simulated sports, and role-playing games (in which many players participate, adopting magical personae in science-fiction or fantasy settings). Poole’s explanations for the psychological satisfactions of games are skimpy and oddly flat: “videogames give you their full attention,” fulfill players’ fantasies, and “set challenges that involve full, rich interactions of signs.” Such abstractions are a poor argument for the games’ supposed emotional depths, although less unsettling than bland praise for a game in which enemies are blown “into pleasingly gory, fleshy chunks.” Poole argues more authoritatively that the games display visual artistry, adding motion to the techniques of aerial perspective and relative size developed by Renaissance painters, and manipulating chiaroscuro, texture, and symbolic elements to evoke atmosphere. Innovations in graphics, producing increasingly convincing illusions of impossible situations, not only add excitement to the games, but will doubtless influence the films and literature of the coming decades.

A perky exploration of the semiotics of video games—if that’s what readers have been waiting for.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2000

ISBN: 1-55790-539-6

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Arcade

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2000

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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NUTCRACKER

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

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