Trigger Happy. Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution

Customer Reviews

A Great Piece of Literature

2004-02-10
This book is not a list of dates and events, it is an insightful look into what videogames really are, and their paradoxes and parallels to the real world. I normally dislike reading books without a story, but I literally had trouble putting this down. "I should go to sleep... one more page... okay, lemme just finish this chapter." Buy it now.

Nice... but where's the rest?

2003-05-04
Poole has a good point to make, and he makes it in the first chapter (that gamers are not social outcasts and games are a form of storytelling every bit as viable as film or literature). Unfortunately, he has about fifty other half-points to make and never finishes a single one of them. He makes a huge deal out of gender (hello... women have made up a nice percentage of gamers since the Pac-Man days!), which seems really counterproductive. His memoir-like descriptions of E3 and its Tokyo equivalent are entertaining, and he is a gifted writer, but 'Trigger Happy' reads like a conversation with a friend who missed an entire generation of gaming.

A bit more please.

2003-02-12
February 11, 2003

I'm a game player, but nowhere near the enthusiast that
many young men (and women, says author Poole) have
become today. I don't own an expensive home system,
unless you count my computer, but I am old enough to
remember most of the video game revolution of the 70's.
I found `Trigger Happy' a little too dedicated to the
examination of form (and only a few sorts of forms at
that).

Some of Poole's conclusions about the psychology behind
game-playing and game-evolution are interesting, but others
are downright tedious. (The evolution and complex
significance of the power up?) More interesting areas are
available that he jumps over, unless a companion effort is
in the making. There should be more testimony here. From
gamers, addicts, designers, doctors, marketers, Hollywood,
you name it.

Video games are huge, will become more huge, and might
some day begin playing us, who knows? As a person with a
possible future endlessly jumping over flaming barrels, I'd
like something a little more substantial.

Bland at best. 2002-11-21
This book refers to the psychological impact of games, or rather, it tries to. Author Steven Poole even admits to not enjoying playing games, so what business does he have writing a book about them? Somewhat informative, but very dry. Print quality is also average--The pictures look as if they were photocopied in a convenience store.

Doesn't go far enough 2002-07-23
An intelligent, broad ranging discussion of videogames. Poole is right to regard videogames as a medium, and one that needs to be evaluated on its own terms instead of compared with books or movies. He brings in an intriguing array of references on art, semiotics, literary theory and other topics to the discussion, and his writing is accessible and smooth.

The flaw in this book is focussing too narrowly on twitch games, mostly the combat/exploration games like Tomb Raider or Metal Gear Solid. Poole can't be bothered with god-games like Populous or Sim-City or pure exploration-puzzle games like Myst, and says as much. He misses out on a huge realm of other styles of game and playing experience. This is a shame, because Poole looks like he has the intellectual chops to write a comprehensive book on this subject.

Pool is on to something in the last chapter, when he theorizes that the next frontier is making the player feel responsible for his decisions in the game world. You might feel bad when Aeris buys it in Final Fantasy VII, but it was in a cut scene so you don't feel responsible because it was beyond your control.

For the reasons Poole discusses earlier, this is hard to do in an adventure-style game. If a character dies in a cut scene, it isn't your fault. If she dies in gameplay, you just keep playing it through until she lives. (Kirk didn't accept the no-win situation; why should you?)

However, this is where his distaste for god-games trips him up. Players of Civilization or other management games don't have easy replay buttons. Anybody whose sim-city burns because they under-funded the fire department knows all about actions and consequences. We care about a place if we build it. We don't care about a place if we just wander around shooting things in it.

Also, instilling responsibility in games may be a dead end. Arguably, the whole point of play is to avoid responsibility. Play is a separate realm in which success or failure don't matter in the rest of world. Creating consequences for our actions in a game world would make it too much like work.

This may be why some people find on-line games so addictive. They become like work, instead of play, because there are consequences if you don't play hard enough. You can let down the other players, and your enemies can attack what you have created.

Poole doesn't write about on-line multi-player games, because they barely existed when he wrote this, only a couple of years ago. I think he could write another intriguing book on the subject, if he would just take his eyes off Lara Croft and take a walk through Riven.

How everyday leisure activity is continuing to evolve 2002-05-06
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 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.

A poor attempt at gaming book writing 2001-08-29
Ok I bought this book based on the recommendations of a few posters before me. I had heard a little about this book in magazines like EGM and CGW, so I thought it would be atleast ok. Well, I was wrong. This Stephen Poole doesn't seem to have played games before PlayStation. He constantly talks about Tomb Raider and as a hardcore gamer, I feel that even mentioning Tomb Raider in my presance lowers my gaming skills. Also, the few times he mentions old school games, he talks constantly of there graphics and not of what made (most of) these games great: Actuall gameplay! Obviously this man is not used to games outside of Fragging and Button Pushing. Another thing I disliked about this book was that there were gramatical errors in it. Ok, I understand that mistakes do happen, but there were quite a few instance of gramatical errors. Another thing is that he didn't seem to quite know the names of the important industry people. THIS IS SAD. What ever you do, do not buy this book. If you see it in a store, shield your eyes and avoid breathing.

Awful. Juuuust awful. 2001-08-21
This book takes itself WAY too seriously...

It does an adequate job of describing the various genres of games, but if you've any experience at all with gaming, you'll find the first third of the book useless. I might recommend it to my grandfather to read as an overview, but no-one under 50.

Moving past the content, the writing style itself is horrid. It smacks of journalism school and grammatical showmanship. It swings wildly between "adverbially rich, and stuffily haughty" (a phrase one might expect to find in the book) and "tragically hip":...

And get your motion sickness bags out for this beauty on the subject of realism in games:...

Bottom line: it's just not a good read. I couldn't get past the writing style to enjoy the content, which, from what I could see, covered a hodge-podge of topics to an apparently random depth, leaving you wanting more at times and starved for the next chapter at others.

Unless your granparents are curious about why you spend so much time with videogames, pass this one up. For the love of Mike, pass it up.

Computer game aesthetics 2001-08-04
Trigger Happy is indeed a noteworthy book. Here we find a look upon computer games from an aesthetic perspective with out trying to find ridiculous narratives. There is a well-described peircian computer semiotics, however it would have been better if the athor had indeed known the computer semiotic origins like Peter Bøgh Andersen and Jens F. Jensen. And there is to much focus on Lara Croft - like as if the athor was possessed. In the end the book becomes boringly moralizing.

However the analysis of the computer games are indeed clever, so please buy the book if you are a computer game researcher.

Steven Poole missed the boat big time! 2001-08-03
Good lord! Who wrote this clap-trap? Being involved with games and the games industry for over 20 years, I found this book neither informative or accurate. As dry a read as 'Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames' is, it is infinitely more competant than this book.

Poole's blind observations of his favorite games sound irritatingly like the kid who hangs out at the local game store spewing his views of what's great and what's garbage. His bias runs throughout the book and proves that Poole has no real comprehension of this business.

Do yourself a favor and buy either 'Phoenix' or 'The First Quarter' instead of this doorstop.