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 ...
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Jul 07, 2011
MJ
rated it: 
This is a passionate and very English (and a decade old) cri de coeur for games to rise above their shortcomings and triumph as a platform for aesthetic wonder and transcendent magic! Yeah! Come on games! Has that happened? A decade on from 2001, that is? Umm . . . no. Not especially, though there are enough truly great games to contest this. Don’t look at me, I’m an observer, I am the horny fact collector.
The text is very flighty and academic: the author being a Cambridge lit gradua More...
The text is very flighty and academic: the author being a Cambridge lit gradua More...
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Feb 13, 2009
Wayne
rated it: 
Steven Poole has made a good attempt at taking a more scientific and academic look at video games and their evolution over the last 30 years or so. I wasn't expecting the book to be as analytical as it was, but it turned out to be a good thing. I think he did a great job of attempting to analyze the industry for multiple viewpoints and zeroing in on particular psychological and sociology ideas.
At times this book can start to get a little too close to the border between entertainment More...
At times this book can start to get a little too close to the border between entertainment More...
Mar 18, 2011
Ryan
rated it:
A look at video games as an art form, with discussions on how similar and different they are from other forms of art. Interesting, especially for the historical discussion of the medium, but also handicapped by age - Poole spends a lot of time talking about Tomb Raider II, for example, and I honestly can't remember the last time I played that game or any details about it. Due to the age, a lot of the discussion becomes obselete: games like Rock Band, World of Warcraft, and the modern incarnati
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Nov 22, 2011
Scott
rated it: 
Another video game book for my paper. This is pretty old, written in 2000, which is ancient for game theory. There have been tons of huge changes in the scene since he wrote this. All that aside though, I personally don't agree with some of his theory. He focuses a lot on games as an imaginary world which exists inextricable to time, but doesn't at all discuss the process of detachment or identification with an avatar. I find it difficult to discuss video games academically if I'm not bring
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Aug 02, 2010
Matt
rated it:
it's amazing how just 10 years have made a lot of what this book does irrelevant, but that is the case . . and i wasn't sure what the overall project of the book was . . . lots of it just seemed like riffing on different aspects of games, etc. . . that being said, it did have some good points and good overall reflections on games, differences between them and other media, their implications as far as why they're popular, what their future might hold, etc. . . in general, with such an evolving fo
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Oct 21, 2008
TheSaint
rated it:
(While reading Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution, my spouse wondered if videogames are a relevant academic topic. During my explanation as to "Yes, they are," I discovered that the author, Steven Poole, wrote a more recent book I purchased for the library, called Unspeak, which is pretty scholarly in itself. This isn't supremely relevant to this review, but highly coincidental.)
Anyway, the ideal reader for this book is most certainly one who plays and en More...
Anyway, the ideal reader for this book is most certainly one who plays and en More...
Mar 19, 2008
James
rated it: 
An intriguing, scholarly, and comprehensive study of the state of the art in videogames circa 2001; the author highlights an extensive range of links to culture, the arts, and human thought over the ages and now. This book will forever shatter any ideas the reader may have had of videogames being a simplistic or shallow form of entertainment and opens doors to some exciting possibilities for future developments and uses of the form.
Jun 28, 2008
Roland
rated it:
I really liked Poole's columns in EDGE - but the book didn't seem half as inspired. Not sure why. Maybe because there wasn't really too much in it I didn't know before?
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