Todd Rogers is not alone. There are now generations of videogame fanatics, and a new book, Gamers: Writers, Artists & Programmers on the Pleasures of Pixels, edited by Shanna Compton, gets to the roots of their fascination. The writers in Compton´s collection share a lifelong passion for gaming, and their stories and essays, while exploring the many facets of the burgeoning videogame subculture, also reflect their own childhood obsessions — obsessions that refuse to yield to adulthood.
The early part of Gamers details the development of videogames through the ´70s and ´80s (Rogers´ heyday), as publishers brought innovative concepts (the physics of flying, 3-D landscapes) to game design. Nostalgia for the Atari era runs high, as many of the authors´ first exposures to videogames came via the Atari 2600 or in the arcades of the time. The early ´90s arcade scene makes an appearance (Street Fighter 2, anyone?), and the book winds up with author Nic Helman comparing the development of film to that of videogames and asking if they´re poised for an artistic breakthrough.
But Gamers is not solely an exercise in nostalgia. Other essays look at more up-to-date games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or Dance Dance Revolution. One hilarious piece on the John Madden Football franchise manages to cover more than a decade´s worth of series history while simultaneously examining how grown men, many literate and scholarly, can be fixated to obsession on garnering imaginary statistics in a fictional NFL world. Todd Rogers is one of the few gamers profiled in the book; he´s the subject of a lively profile by Daniel Nester entitled, ¨Are You Hot Enough to Play with Journey? Todd Rogers is.¨
The book is written mostly in the conversational style of old friends dissecting treasured artifacts of youth. But it can occasionally turn dense. Jim Andrews´ ¨Language Explosion¨ borders on being too technical and scholarly for the layperson, and a few other portions of the book, including pieces by Mark Lamoureux and Shelley Jackson, tend to get a bit dry.
Fortunately, these are the exceptions, and Gamers proves to be an entertaining and enlightening look at what could be the dominant form of consumer entertainment in the 21st century.
This article appears in Jan 5-11, 2005.