In Play: Tales of the Gaming Netherworld

by Neils Clark

Clark uses high-body-count Warcraft weddings, scintillating academic critique, and the occasional devil to give clear, often hilarious explanations to what we're doing in games. Whether you want to know what's helping some players win staring contests with their screens, or why games may just be the state of the art for art, In Play is the book!

Neils Clark has taught game developers at the DigiPen Institute of Technology, and is co-author of Game Addiction.

Genres: Video Games, Nonfiction, Games, Ebooks

363 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 28, 2014

Reviews

[Alexia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting, well-written book about videogames. A mix of the author's gaming experiences and quite educational, thought-provoking chapters about various concepts that can relate to games, such as art, design, manipulation of players via gaming mechanics (the "grinds" of some online games, for example). This all seems to fit together in a surprisingly seamless way and made for an enjoyable reading experience.

I think that the book starts a bit weak in comparison to the latter chapters, and I personally misunderstood the introduction and honestly worried I wasn't going to agree with the author in anything at all. I am glad I was wrong.

[Naseer Alkhouri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Located in the middle between research and anecdotes this is an interesting read on games.