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
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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