Do I love The Last Starfighter? Do I need a new novel version of it? Meh. Do I love 80’s games and remember them fondly? Hell yeah, but even I got a bit tired of the references and repetitiveness in this book. This may be unrelated but these were my personal favorites: I listened to the audiobook of Armada because I so enjoyed the previous audiobook by Ernest Cline, Ready Player One, also read by Wil Wheaton. This novel also threw in a lot of nostalgia for […]
I was prowling through my library, on the search for a romance novel only available in print, when I spied You’re Never Weird on the Internet (almost) (2015) by Felicia Day, sitting out on a display table. I know Felicia Day from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which I loved, but that’s about it. Curious, I cracked open the book to get a feel for it and read the first paragraph of the introduction: “I recently experienced the perfect summary of my career at a Build-A-Bear store […]
A sneakily intellectual graphic novel about a girl learning to love gaming.
Read this all in one go before work one morning last month and really, really liked it. If it had just been a story about a girl and her second gaming life I would have liked it anyway, but it also had some really unexpected stuff about economics and labor, which is not something you exepct to find in a book whose artwork makes you want to hug a pillow because it’s so adorable. You know pretty quickly, though. The book opens with an essay by […]
A nostalgic meditation on friendship, drifting apart, and what drives people to create video games.
YOU is a contemplative and finely crafted novel where every page bleeds with love for the medium and old acquaintances. Russell and his childhood friends Darren, Lisa and Simon were four very different kids brought together by a love of roleplaying games and programming. While his friends went on to form one of the most successful gaming companies in the industry, Russell instead spent his post-degree life drifting through various unfulfilling jobs. 1994 rolls along, and he finds himself winding up with a job at […]