Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
5th out of 20 books
—
6 voters
All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture
Through the stories of gaming's greatest innovations and most beloved creations, journalist Harold Goldberg captures the creativity, controversy--and passion--behind the videogame's meteoric rise to the top of the pop-culture pantheon.
Over the last fifty years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entert...more
Over the last fifty years, video games have grown from curiosities to fads to trends to one of the world's most popular forms of mass entert...more
Paperback, 352 pages
Published
April 5th 2011
by Three Rivers Press
(first published March 29th 2011)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
686)
I would give this four stars - it's engaging and a good overview of pop culture history - but I wasn't enamoured of the writing style.
I'm not really a gamer. This is by choice because strategy and sim games are like crack or online gambling to me (not shooters, those aren't very interesting to my brain) - I can't stop once I start. The first time I played Civilization II with my then-boyfriend we were up for 36 hours straight to finally "win" it in some capacity. Rollercoaster Tycoon and SimCity...more
I'm not really a gamer. This is by choice because strategy and sim games are like crack or online gambling to me (not shooters, those aren't very interesting to my brain) - I can't stop once I start. The first time I played Civilization II with my then-boyfriend we were up for 36 hours straight to finally "win" it in some capacity. Rollercoaster Tycoon and SimCity...more
This new addition to the field of video game histories is a whirlwind tour of the medium from the 70s blips and blobs to the Facebook games of today, with everything in the middle included. Given theherculeantask of covering 45+ years of gaming history in acompletelyserial fashion would probably result in about 4,000 pages, Goldberg has wisely chosen to snapshotpivotalstories. He seizes on some of the most important games, and even more importantly, the zany cast of creatives who made them.
My pe...more
My pe...more
Suponho que há três tipos de livros sobre esta temática. Os profusamente ilustrados mas de texto liminar, para encher o olho com a espectacularidade dos jogos mais graficamente arrojados, os estudos académicos profundos, e obras destas, entusiastas e generalistas que olham para alguns detalhes da história da tecnologia.
All Your Base Are Belong To Us, cujo titulo é um piscar de olhos a um meme recente, traça uma curta história da indústria dos jogos olhando para um conjunto de casos específicos q...more
All Your Base Are Belong To Us, cujo titulo é um piscar de olhos a um meme recente, traça uma curta história da indústria dos jogos olhando para um conjunto de casos específicos q...more
I do not yet have the physical book (Amazon estimates the delivery date to be between Tuesday September 11 and Wednesday September 26, 2012) but I have been reading what I can on the Amazon preview and Google Books. I've gotta say, so far I'm disappointed.
The subtitle for this book is "How Fifty Years of Video Games Conquered Pop Culture." Maybe the 'conquer pop culture' part is hidden in the parts that I do not yet have access to, but so far the book is just an overview of the history of video...more
The subtitle for this book is "How Fifty Years of Video Games Conquered Pop Culture." Maybe the 'conquer pop culture' part is hidden in the parts that I do not yet have access to, but so far the book is just an overview of the history of video...more
I have book hoarding issues. I bought this book over a year ago, and it's been languishing on my shelf for over a year.* I picked it up to take a break between epic George R. R. Martin tomes, and I'm glad I did! I love games and I'd say I consider myself a gamer, but I'm not as hardcore as a lot of dyed in the wool gamers. I've loved playing video games since my parents bought me a copy of Jumpman back in the day; I still spend an ungodly amount of time in front of a glowing screen.
Even so, I le...more
Even so, I le...more
In this somewhat misleadingly-titled book, All Your Base Are Belong To Us takes readers on a behind the scenes look at the making of several big games that really made an impact on the industry as a whole. From Mario to World of Warcraft, Goldberg portrays intimate accounts on the blood, sweat, and tears it took for some famous developers to realize their dreams and make the products which changed the face of gaming through the years.
It took me a few chapters to get into the format of this book,...more
It took me a few chapters to get into the format of this book,...more
If you have any interest in videogames at all, this book is worth a read. It's not great, but you're bound to run across at least a few anecdotes of which you were previously unaware. This alone may make it worth your while.
Goldberg apparently is not used to operating within the longform story format as he is not really able to construct a cogent overall narrative. Instead the book reads like a series of magazine articles which make only tangential and passing references to one another. It's a p...more
Goldberg apparently is not used to operating within the longform story format as he is not really able to construct a cogent overall narrative. Instead the book reads like a series of magazine articles which make only tangential and passing references to one another. It's a p...more
I grew up with an Atari 400 and all the extensions, including the floppy drive. It was awesome, and I loved playing games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Space Invaders, Bounty Bob: Miner 49er, and so on. I loved games, even though I didn't upgrade until my uncle bought my family the Super Nintendo a few years after it's release. I still love games, though I don't own a TV and my computer doesn't run PC games well. I was really, REALLY stoked when I came across Harold Goldberg's All Your Base Are Bel...more
Terrible. Harold Goldberg's writing style is reminiscent of a Barnard freshman. It is honestly hard to imagine how someone can take something as interesting and as easily documented (given that the vast majority of the players are still alive) as the history of videogames and still manage to produce a volume that is so trite and difficult to follow. Sometimes it seemed that Goldberg had "edited" out a sentence but then forgotten that others referred to it. Towards the end of the book, his main f...more
Let's face it, this book was written horribly. However, its value lies not in literary merit.
This is a book that contains many stories: the stories of those who created some of the most important video games and video game companies in history. If you ever wondered about the origins of games like Myst, Phantasmagoria, Tetris, World of Warcraft, The Sims, or maybe even Super Mario himself, you're in luck.
Anyone who's curious about the history of Video Games will appreciate the work put into findi...more
This is a book that contains many stories: the stories of those who created some of the most important video games and video game companies in history. If you ever wondered about the origins of games like Myst, Phantasmagoria, Tetris, World of Warcraft, The Sims, or maybe even Super Mario himself, you're in luck.
Anyone who's curious about the history of Video Games will appreciate the work put into findi...more
A lot of fun. It takes you on a journey of video games from their inception with the creation of Pong (actually no, there was a Space Game that some engineers created at MIT that predates the iconic ping-pong game) all the way to the multi-player and casual gaming recent phenoms. Some reviews had issues with the title, perhaps expecting a discussion about how video games eclipsed other popular forms of entertainment, such as television or film. That is certainly not what this book is. Rather, it...more
This is an uneven book, but useful for aging geeks like myself who want to catch up with the latest trends in videogames ("latest" meaning "since I was in college"). Goldberg's first few chapters are marred by a breathless writing style and an over-reliance on cliches and second-person "experiential" digressions, but he largely abandons these irritating devices in the latter half of the book. His account of the origins of such classics as Tetris, Super Mario Brothers, and Sim City, as well as mo...more
I wanted to like this book and there were some interesting stories about the industry and some of it's major players, but it lacked depth and insight, and references. There were direct quotes, but no indication of interviews or sources. The writing was really, really bad. Just no other way to put it. The book was full of unnecessary similes, a few made me chuckle, but the bulk did not fit and made this a clunky read. I have long been interested in the video games industry and have read some fasc...more
Hay algo que distingue este libro de otros similares y es que cada capítulo es un ensayo personal sobre un desarrollador específico. Se enfoca en la persona o compañía más representativa de un género y cuenta su historia desde un punto de vista íntimo y aprovechando el tema, también habla de sus competidores y contemporáneos.
Por ejemplo, hay un capítulo sobre Will Wright que cuenta cómo nació SimCity, pero de paso aprovecha para contar sobre las (asquerosas) prácticas empresariales de EA y otro...more
Por ejemplo, hay un capítulo sobre Will Wright que cuenta cómo nació SimCity, pero de paso aprovecha para contar sobre las (asquerosas) prácticas empresariales de EA y otro...more
This was an interesting overview of the history of video games. Each chapter focuses on a different game and the history of the game's development. The author does fall into some annoying habits, however. Each chapter ends with a sort of 'guess what the next game is' cliffhanger and you don't realize what the next game is until halfway through the next chapter. It's a frustrating and unnecessary technique. Goldberg could easily have named the chapters after the game in question and the reader st...more
A welcome and expansive history of the industry. Having lived and played through the entirety of the history of video-games, and having read other such titles, this book suffers from "Been there, read that" syndrome. If you have never read a history of video-gaming I would recommend this but if you've already been down this path you can safely bypass. I picked it up based on reading a glowing review which sold me on it and like many similar reviews on the games themselves, it was over-hyped.
Not actually that great; it's really a fairly disjointed articles (chapters) about various videogame personalities. Despite the subtitle, there is no thesis or attempt to actually demonstrate that video games have 'conquered pop culture'. I guess by giving us the backstories behind a dozen or two people who designed videogames, the author assumed we would come to that conclusion.
The prose is pretty tiresome too; there are lots of painful analogies that rely on the authors' personal experiences w...more
The prose is pretty tiresome too; there are lots of painful analogies that rely on the authors' personal experiences w...more
A behind the scenes look on the movers and shakers of the video industry since its beginning many years ago, AYBBTU is a must read for video game afficianados who went to learn more about the roots of their grand obsession. The stories vary from funny to just plain depressing. A fascinating book you can pick up and put down several times. The perfect book to read while reading other books.
It is a good book, but it has some strange topic choices. Ignore the iPhone game industry and write about a specific Xbox live game is a weird choice in my opinion. Also, i believe that writing a book about video-games ignoring companies like Sega is like omitting part of the history.
In the end, I consider this book entertaining. If you love video-games, you'll probably enjoy this book.
In the end, I consider this book entertaining. If you love video-games, you'll probably enjoy this book.
So much promise, and the earlier chapters are really excellent. But a lot of the later content is pretty uneven, and the discussion of video game movies is almost useless. The book doesn't quite live up to it's title, but the earlier video game history provided is so intriguing that I still gave it 4 stars (well, really 3.5 but Goodreads doesn't offer that option).
At first I really liked this book, but more I read, the less I liked it. First of all the authors use of figures of speech and parallels is weird and childish. But the main problem is that the book bypasses either almost or totally games like Civ and Doom - and call´s itself a history of video games! Game over man!
This is a good compilation of the stories behind culture-changing games and the people who made them, but it doesn't talk as much about theory or the more academic side of what the title would imply. It was enjoyable, but I definitely didn't get out of it what I had been hoping for.
It's a strong account of the evolution of the video gaming culture. One of the things that it does best is labeling the controversies of each individual era of video gaming, if you can make a case for individual eras within a medium that has yet to be around for a century.
Interesting look at the first 50 years of video games. Each chapter focused on a key developer or concept.
I never knew Sierra was created by a housewife. I also thought Al Lowe was the head of Sierra. He made the Leisure Suit Larry games, it just made sense.
I never knew Sierra was created by a housewife. I also thought Al Lowe was the head of Sierra. He made the Leisure Suit Larry games, it just made sense.
I am always surprised when I see how the hardcore gaming crowd judges books. Some of the hardcore crowd appreciates new insights. Some seem threatened by authors who present new information. These guys snoop around for some insignificant error and then rave and rave about how those errors ruins the entire book and you shouldn't trust a word the author utters.
Harold Goldberg wrote a good, solid book about the workings of the video game industry. Goldberg, and Goldberg alone, has traveled inside R...more
Harold Goldberg wrote a good, solid book about the workings of the video game industry. Goldberg, and Goldberg alone, has traveled inside R...more
Really more about the video game business than video games themselves, but I guess that's how it was advertised if I'd had the smarts to read past the colon in the title.
Most interesting fact: The princess in the Legend of Zelda series was named after Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was some kind of writer too, I hear...
Most interesting fact: The princess in the Legend of Zelda series was named after Zelda Fitzgerald, novelist and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was some kind of writer too, I hear...
As a history of video games and the industry goes, this isn't too bad. The author did plenty of research and conducted interviews with many of the subjects he discusses; good on him.
I guess I was thrown off by the subtitle, "How Fifty Years of Video Games Conquered Pop Culture." I was expecting more of an analysis of how pop culture has been influenced by video games and vice versa. Instead it's pretty much a straight-up history of the rise (and fall) of certain influential companies and game de...more
I guess I was thrown off by the subtitle, "How Fifty Years of Video Games Conquered Pop Culture." I was expecting more of an analysis of how pop culture has been influenced by video games and vice versa. Instead it's pretty much a straight-up history of the rise (and fall) of certain influential companies and game de...more
Lacked oomfph. Writing was subpar, no linear progression within the chapters made it difficult and irritating to follow the story. You could tell where he had personal insight was where he wrote best, which isn't saying much. I expect there are better books on this subject out there, and that one day I will read one that will blow this title out the water. Still, enjoyable for what it was – a quick read for the commute to work (aka, not particularly engaging, took my time, never missed my stop).
I thought I would really enjoy this book, as I am an avid gamer, and have been for many years now. However, this book was just too dry for me to enjoy it. I would have enjoyed it more if it was more focused on the games themselves, than going into so much detail on the people, how they grew up, what they did before making games, what their hobbies were, ack, just too much!
A pretty good history of the gaming industry. Sine this has released we've seen some of the companies change position - but that happens throughout the entire book and industry.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Harold Goldberg is the author of ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US: How 50 Years of Video Games Conquered Pop Culture, a narrative history of video games, coming on April 5, 2011 from Random House. It has been excerpted in Vanity Fair and featured on NPR's Morning Edition.
He is the founder of the New York Videogame Critics Circle, a group comprised of New York's finest videogame journalists.
He curren...more
More about Harold Goldberg...
He is the founder of the New York Videogame Critics Circle, a group comprised of New York's finest videogame journalists.
He curren...more
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
Mar 15, 2012 10:21pm