How to Talk About Videogames

Ian Bogost is Ivan Allen College Distinguished Chair in Media Studies and professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the author of many books, including How to Do Things with Videogames and Alien Phenomenology: Or, What It's Like to Be a Thing (both Minnesota), as well as Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism and Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. He is the award-winning game designer of A Slow Year, Cow Clicker, and more.

"This is Ian Bogost at his best. Keen intelligence, acid wit, and a restless desire to look beyond the surface and tease out games’ less obvious, more important meanings."-Frank Lantz, director, NYU Game Center"No one else is as wide-ranging, funny, or inspiringly immune to cant or groupthink as Ian Bogost. How to Talk about Videogames is his most accessible and entertaining book yet."-Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives and Apostle*"Ian Bogost can take apart a game’s design and tell you exactly what makes it work and what it means to us personally and to our game-playing society. How to Talk about Videogames has deep insights into a range of current topics we are dealing with or experiencing today. There’s a lot here to learn."-John Romero, veteran game creator"If you want an engaging, enjoyable tour of the video game commentary in 2015 conducted by a smart and entertaining writer, you’d be hard-pressed to do much better than How to Talk about Videogames by Ian Bogost. "-Boston Globe"Whether Bogost is examining old favorites like Ms. Pac-Man or scrutinizing a flash-in-the-pan app like Flappy Bird, his outlook is thoughtful, inquisitive, and amused."-Game On"Bogost embraces the preposterousness and paradox of games as both consumer products and art, and in running with that tension he offers a compelling method of understanding and writing about them."-Gamechurch.com"[How to Talk about Videogames] has already proven indispensable to those of us interested in how video games have become such a vital artistic medium."-Electronic Literature"Ian Bogost’s How to Talk About Videogames isn’t just a book about games-it’s a book about criticism, and where it fits in our wider culture. Bogost is the rare academic writer whose work is as clear and exciting as the best of the mainstream, and whose critical exercises backfire by becoming enormous commercial/popular successes."-Boing Boing

• ContentsIntroduction. Nobody Asked for a Toaster Critic: Doing Videogame Criticism1. The Squalid Grace of Flappy Bird2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Game Studio: Flow, Flower, Journey3. A Way of Looking: Mirror's Edge4. The Blue Shell is Everything that’s Wrong with America: Mario Kart5. Little Black Sambo, I’m Going to Eat You Up!: Scribblenauts6. Can a Gobbler Have it All?: Ms. Pac-Man7. Racketeer Sports: Farmville, Candy Crush Saga, and Free to Play8. The Haute Couture of Videogames: Hundreds9. Can the Other Come Out and Play?: Between and Way10. Free Speech is not a Marketing Plan: Bully and Medal of Honor11. Shaking the Holocaust Train: Manhunt, Train, and Gestural Control12. The Long Shot: Heavy Rain13. Puzzling the Sublime: Orbital & Drop714. Work is the Best Place to Goof Off: Flight Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator, and the New Simulation15. A Trio of Artisanal Reviews: Proteus16. What is a Sports Videogame?: FIFA, Madden, and More17. The Agony of Mastery: Swing Copters18. The Abyss Between the Human and the Alpine: Mountain19. Word Games Last Forever: Words with Friends20. Perpetual Adolescence: Gone HomeConclusion. Anything But Games: Not Doing Game CriticismNotes