Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution
by Steven Poole
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Description
The Edge calls Trigger Happy a "seminal piece of work." For the first time ever, an aficionado with a knowledge of art, culture, and a real love of gaming takes a critical look at the future of our videogames, and compares their aesthetic and economic impact on society to that of film. Thirty years after the invention of the simplest of games, more videogames are played by adults than children. This revolutionary book is the first-ever academically worthy and deeply engaging critique of one show more of today's most popular forms of play: videogames are on track to supersede movies as the most innovative form of entertainment in the new century. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Trigger Happy's Limit mechanic makes for an interesting conceit in providing a unified core. Whether fighting with guns, pulling political strings, or intimidating with cutting words, zero Limit will leave you in a dark and very bad place. Solid writing with an excellent extended back section of sample tasks, archetypes, play example, plus three adventures. Worth trying for bad ass action gaming.
I enjoy videogames, but I much prefer reading about them to playing them myself - I'm just not much good at them. Steven Poole, a regular contributor to Edge magazine in the UK, treats videogame culture seriously - as it deserves to be treated - and looks at the ways in which it affects and is affected by popular culture. A very interesting collection of essays on the subject.
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Author Information
7 Works 726 Members
Steven Poole is a columnist for the Guardian and has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, the New Statesman, the Atlantic, and many other publications. He was educated at Cambridge, lived for many years in Paris, and is now based in East London.
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2000
- Epigraph
- Man is the plaything of the gods, and that is the best of him; and so we should play the noblest games.
Plato
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
T. S. Eliot
Aha!
Lara Croft - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)For it is an inevitable consequence of their extraordinary success that videogames will shape the worlds that we all inhabit tomorrow.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)(Afterword): The idea of invading online spaces that exist for no other reason than to gratify militaristic fantasies, and then gently defacing them with antiwar slogans, is not just funny (though funny it is), but also a demonstration of how online gameworlds, even those of apparently simple shooters, are becoming sophisticated enough to be arenas of political debate, sites of symbolic activism.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, Technology
- DDC/MDS
- 794.8 — Arts & recreation Recreation, sports, and performing arts Indoor games of skill Electronic games
- LCC
- GV1469.3 .P66 — Geography, Anthropology and Recreation Recreation. Leisure Recreation. Leisure Games and amusements Indoor games and amusements Board games. Move games
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 197
- Popularity
- 165,393
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.32)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 1
