Death by Video Game: Tales of Obsession from the Virtual Frontline

by Simon Parkin

Whether it's Space Invaders, Candy Crush Saga or Grand Theft Auto, video games draw us in and don't let go. In Taiwan, a spate of deaths at gaming cafés is raising a question: why is it that some of us are playing games beyond the limits of our physical wellbeing?

Death by Video Game uncovers the real stories behind our video game obsession. Along the way, award-winning journalist Simon Parkin meets the players and game developers at the frontline of virtual extremism, including the New York surgeon attempting to break the Donkey Kong world record; the Minecraft player three years into an epic journey towards the edge of the game's vast virtual world and the German hacker who risked prison to discover the secrets behind Half-Life 2.

Investigating the impact of video games on our lives, Death by Video Game will change the way we think about our virtual playgrounds.

Genres: Nonfiction, Video Games, Games, Psychology, Gaming, Cultural, Technology

244 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 2015

Reviews

[Andrew McMillen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why do humans play video games? Viewed from a remove, they can seem like little more than merit-less time-wasters. This can be true even for those embedded in the culture, such as British journalist Simon Parkin, whose first book, 'Death by Video Game', explores this question at length and from a variety of engrossing angles.

“In humanity’s ongoing project of survival and propagation, video games seemingly contribute little,” he notes in the introduction. Yet there are compelling depths to the virtual worlds that we can explore with keyboard, mouse, controller and smartphone screen. Indeed, as the title suggests, a spate of young gamers have been so smitten by these worlds in recent years that they have been found dead at the keyboard after extended periods of play.

“But we’re not going to linger with the corp­ses,” Parkin writes. “The more pressing question is what compelled these young people to emigrate from reality into their virtual dimensions beyond the natural limits of their wellbeing?” It’s a good question, and 'Death by Video Game' splits the answer into a dozen chapters, with ­titles such as 'Belonging', 'Empathy', 'Healing' and 'Chronoslip', the last being a term coined to describe the common experience of losing track of time after becoming immersed in a game.

Parkin’s journalistic approach to the topic sees him uncovering an array of untold stories wherein humans choose to interface with games, to their benefit or detriment. Importantly, however, he does not remain an impassive observer throughout the narrative: the author occasionally interjects with personal stories, such as how he and his university friends regularly took part in marathon late-night sessions of the 1997 Nintendo 64 game GoldenEye 007, or how he came home one evening to find his wife still sitting on the floor and playing Animal Crossing in the exact same position as when he left hours earlier. “She turned her head stiffly, eyes hooded, as if awakening from a coma,” he writes. “ ‘Whoa,’ she said. ‘I am cold and hungry.’ ”

The best of these personal interjections is saved for chapter eight, Hiding Place, which tells two stories of people using games to escape troubling personal circumstances: first, a man whose wife suffers a painful complication in her pregnancy, so the pair escapes into the cold, grim world of Skyrim as a temporary coping mechanism; and an Iraqi teenager who becomes one of the world’s top Battlefield 3 players, which is ironic as it’s an American-centric war shooter title primarily aimed at Western audiences.

In the midst of these two affecting stories, Parkin offers: “I remember when, as a teenager, my parents first separated. I too found routine and direction in a video game (mine was Final Fantasy VII) when the framework of my life seemed to be collapsing.”

Passages such as this point to the remarkable strength of Parkin’s style, which is energised by empathy alongside his ability to craft an engaging human story. After all, at the heart of every video game is human endeavour and all its successes and failures; the code is dreamed up by human brains and typed by human fingers, all for the enjoyment of other humans.

The question of why many millions of us choose to engage in this behaviour is deceptively complex, and in 'Death by Video Game' Parkin skilfully analyses it in an accessible yet deeply considered manner. This fine book is a must-read for those who play games as well as those who seek to understand the attraction that this form of play holds for others — such as parents bemused by their child’s immersion in the popular world of Minecraft, perhaps.

Review first published in The Weekend Australian, October 3 2015: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...

[Ignacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

La estructura del libro es sota caballo y rey. A lo largo de una docena de artículos bien compartimentados, Parkin analiza la atracción de los videojuegos desde diferentes facetas: cómo satisfacen nuestro deseo de explorar; su condición de refugio a la hora de sobrellevar las contrariedades de nuestra vida; su función como puerta de entrada a otras formas de ver el mundo y observar los problemas que nos rodean; su indudable valor como fuente de empatía hacia todo tipo de sentimientos... Y para ello repite hasta la saciedad el siguiente esquema: plantea su pequeña tesis, la sustenta en tres o cuatro ejemplos prácticos y cierra el artículo con su breve conclusión. Todo se fía a los casos prácticos expuestos y en este sentido he salido bastante satisfecho. Desconocía la mayor parte de ellos y en sus textos he descubierto una miríada de juegos y anécdotas muy ilustrativas. También, a ratos, me ha quedado una cierta sensación de superficialidad; no todas las tesis reciben el mismo apoyo. Pero quizás no tiene sentido que un libro de divulgación, que explora los videojuegos desde una perspectiva múltiple y alumbra características jamás tenidas en cuenta en los medios de comunicación tradicionales, vaya más allá de donde llega Parkin.

Desde luego cualquier redactor de ocio y cultura, sea del medio que sea, debiera leer el libro. No creo que la perspectiva general desde la cual se suelen abordar cambiara pero al menos se conjurarían ciertos lugares comunes que ya hieden.

[Andrea Rufo (Ann) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would like to start out by letting you know that in actuality, there is not a lot of death in this book. I'm not saying you're here for the death. I'm just saying if you perhaps picked up this book because you are fascinated by the individuals who have in fact died while playing video games or right after they stopped and you just really want to know how that's possible and what the autopsy showed and what the medical theories might be and just how many of these deaths are there? Well, you won't find out here. Just letting you know. Because although such deaths begin the book, Parkin's real focus is on exploring what role video games have among the living. He does present an interesting look at video game culture, community, and future, well worth the reading. Which I did, in bed, next to my husband, while he played a video game on his ipod, the entire time.

[Virginia Rand · Rating 2 out of 5]

It felt like there was a huge gap between the book I was promised and the book that I ended up reading. :-(

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly my review seems a bit unfair to the book. The writing is great and doesn’t try to confuse you for the sake of being smart and the research is interesting, but personally this wasn’t the book for me. I took an interest, since I myself find that I play video games maybe a little too much - but it felt more of a comprehensive delving into the history of video games in different media, rather than a dive into the obsession. Felt like it could’ve been a great read, but personally just not for me

[Rodolfo Santullo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Por aquello de que al mal trago hay que apurarlo, empecemos con lo peor: Simon Parkin no es la estrella más brillante del firmamento. El crítico y periodista especializado en videojuegos -quien publica regularmente en medio tan prestigiosos como The New Yorker, The Guardian o New Scientist- arma todo su planteo a partir de verdades de perogrullo u opiniones personales que busca hacer pasar como verdades indiscutibles, tratando siempre de que los datos que está presentando inclinen la balanza a favor de su teoría. Esto -que, en rigor, no es algo que no haga la gran mayoría de los ensayistas, aunque sin dudas que logran ser algo más disimulados- hace que sobre todo durante del primer tramo del libro uno tenga que soportar tonterías, opiniones que endiosan el mundo de los videojuegos por encima de otras narrativas culturales como la literatura, la historieta, el cine o la televisión, sin que ese ensalzamiento tenga nunca una base real y objetiva por encima de la encendida opinión de Parkin. Disparates como "ningún otro lenguaje resulta tan atractivo y adictivo" o "no hay inmersión personal en una ficción como cuando se trata de un videojuego" son algunas de las perlas que Parkin nos regala en las primeras partes de su largo ensayo. La misma "justificación" que propone para disparar este ensayo -una serie de muertes en cibercafés de Asia, en jóvenes que jugaron horas y horas sin parar hasta morir- es poco consistente. Con las condiciones así dadas -mala alimentación, falta de sueño, deshidratación- da lo mismo que estuvieran jugando videojuegos, viendo porno o mirando inagotables series completas de Netflix. No logra nunca Parkin vincular las muertes al uso de videojuegos, más allá de afirmarlo reiteradamente.
Y lo peor de todo es que no lo precisa. Una vez deja atrás su innecesaria vinculación a las muertes o las afirmaciones sin correlación con datos fehacientes y entra de lleno en la historia de los videojuegos el libro es buenísimo. Cuando Parkin asume que es un periodista, investiga, reporta y construye una investigación profunda sobre el fenómeno de los videojuegos, desde su creación, su salto desde las universidades que los crearon en los setentas, su pasaje por los salones de "maquinitas", hasta la llegada masiva de las consolas caseras. Su salto desde juegos mainstream hasta las creaciones independientes, los juegos pedagógicos, los juegos como catarsis, los juegos como herramienta de contención, sociabilización y forjadores de verdaderos universos donde los jugadores tienen chances de crear toda una nueva vida.
Es ahí cuando este libro se vuelve realmente un documento relevante, ya que la investigación que realiza Parkin es única -apoyada por numerosas entrevistas a diseñadores de juegos, jugadores y periodistas especializados- y permite además construir un panorama real a un mundo que muchos no están conociendo y donde realmente el potencial narrativo y cultural está desconociendo límites que imperan en los otros lenguales (cine, TV, etc.). El mundo de los videojuegos se ha transformado verdaderamente en infinito en las últimas décadas y este repaso/investigación que hace Parkin es una herramiente imprescindible para conocerlo algo más en profundidad o para ir al menos anotando al margen tantos títulos, tantas propuestas diferentes, tantos juegos que escapan al haz de luz que los podría popularizas pero son a su vez extremadamente interesantes.
El único problema del libro -aunque no es un problema propio del libro- es que predica para conversos. Lamentablemente es de suponer que aquellos posibles lectores que no sean jugadores de videojuegos se salten su lectura por considerarla irrelevante a priori. Y es una pena, porque es en verdad una puerta a este mundo tan rico, interesante y cargado de matices. Queda al menos para aquellos no prejuiciosos -sean jugadores ya de videojuegos o no- en descubrir todo lo que Parkin y su generosa investigación ofrecen.
Por una vez, combino la reseña de "Muerte por Videojuego" con la recomendación de dos documentales que funcionan muy bien como complemento: "The King of Kong" de Seth Gordon (2007) y "Atari: Game Over" de Zak Penn (2014), ambos muy fáciles de encontrar.

[Moni Oluwatudimu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book encapsulates far more than those who have a died as a direct or indirect result of playing a video game.
It delves into why do we play games at all and what is their effect on us. As well as how should they be treated within society.
The author has done a lot of interviews with users which makes for a much more personable and down to earth read.

The new chapter illustrations are wonderfully nostalgic too.

This can be enjoyed by those who are a fan of the domain but also by those that aren't to get an objective overview.

[Juan · Rating 5 out of 5]

El libro es un lúcido ensayo que explora el gusto por los vídeo juegos, abordado de inicio desde una perspectiva algo sombría: los vídeo jugadores que han perdido la vida jugando. Es una lectura esclarecedora, ya sea que se conozca o no el mundo del gaming. Incluso puede llegar a ser bastante emotiva, si se es un fan del mundo de los pixeles y los polígonos.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a typically intelligent, considered look at what is the youngest and perhaps the most important new popular medium of our time. The approach is not impersonal, but primarily journalistic: rather than making an argument solely from experience, or launching a soapbox-style apologia for the subject, the author seeks instead to demonstrate and to explain the virtues of games by reference to all kinds of different examples from around the world.

We start off in an internet cafe in Taiwan, where a young man’s heart fails after an extended gaming session that lasted something like twenty-three hours. Other examples referring directly to the title of the book follow, and though they are incredibly rare, these cases remain notable; it would be perfectly possible, as the author explains, to die in a similar way in front of any other work of art or entertainment, but what distinguishes games is the very particular way in which they seem to entice people to play for hours without end.

Yet in a sense, this book isn’t really about those deaths at all. Their significance and their tragedy is not overlooked, but in the wider context of the book, they are only the jumping-off point for a wider investigation into what is interesting about games in the first place, and what compels people to play them to a degree of obsession. This being the case, the whole thing is somewhat skewed towards a general audience, perhaps one who doesn’t know much (and is faintly suspicious) about the subject matter. There’s a lot here that other hobbyist readers like myself will probably take for granted, but the prose here is such a pleasure to read that I’m sure they won’t mind: the author has a great knack for concentrating his arguments into elegant, penetrating phraseology, and there’s a pleasing rhythm to the balance of quotes, examples and opinion here that makes the whole thing very easy and enjoyable to read.

My only reservation is that I’m not sure it adds a great deal that is wholly new to the canon of writing about video games. The writing is generally very good, but there’s not much here to surprise or astonish — though that might be because much of it was all quite familiar to me. To put it another way: it’s a book about the people who play games, rather than being a work of game criticism. The thesis moves towards a comfortable place, and even when the book does touch on the difficult topic of game ‘addiction’, it’s largely depicted as a kind of misunderstanding, a halfway point between the equally popular alternatives of casual and studious appreciation. The research is fastidious and fascinating, but by the end I didn’t feel I was any closer to understanding the mindset of the most obsessive players. But I did enjoy it, and I do think this would be a perfect way for someone with an interest but little experience in the subject to broaden their knowledge and awareness of the possibilities offered by video games.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty interesting read for the most part, if slightly repetitive in many of its assertions. If I could I'd probably give it 3.5 stars.

I do feel the title is misleading, and actually I wasn't particularly inclined to read it at first specifically for that reason, just on the assumption (reinforced by the first chapter) that this was a book about the deleterious effects of video games (yawn). But it ended up being a fairly interesting series of essays about the many reason different people play different video games, what the medium has done, and is doing, for and within our culture, what the potential of the medium is and how developers are experimenting with it, and what praise and criticism surround it. So, if you can get past the first chapter, which is mostly anecdotal stories about a few gamers in Taiwan that died while playing video games (which was not uninteresting), the purpose of the book will slowly start to reveal itself to you.

For non-gamer like me (my last gaming system was the original NES so, other than the occasional arcade visit and that one time I played Portal, video games are not a medium I have deep knowledge about) a lot of the information about specific games was new and interesting. Though to people immersed in the gaming culture there is likely little in this book they don't already know. And some of the philosophizing about why people game could come off as a little patronizing, depending on one's personality. I found the specific personal stories of individuals much more compelling than the author's personal take on "why people game".

Still, after having read it I realize that some of my preconceptions of what is going on in gaming are pretty outdated. And it shows that what many developers are doing these days is much more expansive & interesting than I had realized. So the book has inspired me to go and see if there aren't some indie games out there that might interest me.

So there's that. (less)

[Andre Hermanto · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good:
* A few thought provoking essays about gaming.

Bad:
* I find that many of the essays in the book are not interesting. This is probably because: I've played/heard of the game, I'm aware of the issues/controversies of the game/topic or the game being discussed is so obscure and irrelevant, it's not even worth playing or even knowing.
* Inconsistencies/errors, for example: the book initially claims that team Dignitas currently has 70 players. A few pages later it claims that the team currently has around 60 players.

[JayLando22 · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is written poorly.

That out of the way, it also tries to be about too much. The sensational title is only partially and occasionally explored over the course of the book.

It reads like a manuscript of a novice video game journalist. Instead of chapters, they feel more like blog posts.

Additionally, most of the subjects covered within have been done by actual video game journalists and better. This is a collation of information the way a rushed homework assignment is the collation of a semester of lessons.

At least it is very short.

[Joseph Boquiren · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of the book is a bit of engineered clickbait. A more accurate title might be: 'Videogames, the new Storytelling Medium'. Simon Parkin does write about the isolated occurrences of players dying while at their computers. These instances he writes about are about as rare as people dying while reading a novel or watching a play. Much of the book talks about the potential of videogames to tell a story in a more deeply compelling way than older more traditional means. 'In videogames,' the author writes, 'the player is an active participant in the unfolding of a story'.

[Amar Pai · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scattered and unnecessary. There’s no “there” there

[Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe the title could have been, "A Brief History of Video Games and the Mention of a Few Deaths." I was expecting more discussion about the effects of video games. Probably would have been more interesting for a video game fan, but you will learn about video games.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a good history of video games, but it's like literary clickbait! There is very little mention of the people who died playing games due to their addiction/compulsion after the first chapter, and that is the whole reason I picked this up.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[William Schram · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death By Video Game is a book written by Simon Parkin. It delivers what I expected from a book with such a title. I figured that the Columbine Massacre would be in there, but I did not realize that someone made a game based off of it. Rather than an attempt to glorify their deeds, the game is an exploration of what really happens when a person dies by showing things like autopsy reports and the like. Some of the other deaths that occurred through Video Games is when people play them for far too long. This seems more prevalent in Asian Countries, but I am probably remembering that incorrectly.

A basic theme of the book is that the humble video game is multiple things depending on who you ask. It is an art form that has not existed for a long span of time. Even reading novels had a time where it was considered a salacious act not fit for a person of good standing. Movies have had that sort of time as well. I have not watched many movies, but I have heard of movies that have sparked controversy.

Video Games are not strangers to controversy. Some of the games that people have put out are atrocious. One game the author mentions is Custer’s Revenge, a game that I only heard of through the Angry Video Game Nerd. It is for the Atari 2600, so that was quite a while ago. Some games can have you commit genocide. Take Civilization, the game series initially developed by Sid Meier. There are many ways to play that game, but the quickest way to victory is usually eliminating your enemies, and that means to wipe the other players off the map.

So the author spends some time talking about games that have meaning to people. There’s this one game that I heard of through the Game Grumps but many others were quite new to me. That is not to say that the game they played was a laugh riot; it was The Graveyard, a game where you control an elderly woman and eventually sit down on a bench. I don’t know if this always happens, but the end of the game has her dying.

The major point most lawmakers and pundits try to make merely show that they have no idea what they are talking about. This is my opinion, but I don’t see how playing Doom or Goldeneye 007 is possibly going to prepare a person to be able to kill another human being. Depictions of violence have existed in movies and television before. I suppose the difference is that you become the character, or rather that your actions have a direct effect on what is happening in the game. Mortal Kombat might be game in which you can rip someone’s spinal cord out, but that does not encourage a person to do that in real life.

[Bibliophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jan. 2012, New Taipei City, Taiwan - a young man logs on in an Internet cafe. For the next 23 hours he plays almost continuously. At some point, he dies at the computer, only discovered 9 hours later when staff went to inform him that his usage time was up.

Parkin uses this incident as the hook to draw readers into his book, in which he asks three overarching questions: 1) what provokes people to continue playing beyond the limits of their well-being, 2) what convinced their brains to ignore physical signals and continue playing, and 3) what draws billions of people worldwide back to games? The author investigates different aspects of video games that he identifies as part of their mass appeal (e.g. the way video games are geared toward success, as a way of belonging to a group, as a way of healing from grief and/or trauma, creating idealized worlds that people can strive to emulate in the real world, etc.). He looks at both the pros and cons of each aspect - moderation and a firm grasp of what is reality vs. the game is key.

I picked up this book because it sounded interesting. (I vaguely remembered reading about the rash of video game-related deaths years ago.) This book was not what I expected to read, but that's okay. Being that I'm not much of a video game player myself, I tried to go in with an open mind. What I found was that my conception of what a video game is has been broadened. When Parkin writes about chronoslip - how we lose time when playing games - I could relate, because I've lost hours playing Minesweeper, online jigsaw puzzles, and mah-jong. I discovered a range of video games, not just the big highly-advertised ones that you see on t.v., but other smaller releases (some you can find for free online). This book definitely widened my understanding of video games and their appeal for people.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Parkin's writing on games in journalism so I figured I'd be a big fan of his book exploring the lives of people who died from playing video games for an excessive amount of time, but that's not really what this books about. It's just about video games as a whole.

This book kind of breaks up the various reasons that people liek to play video games and then ususally interviews or profiles people who worked on or played games for that reason. Thus it's very expansive and also kind of aimless. Tristan Donovan's more focused and interesting Replay: The History of Video Games had the easy task of just following the chronological path of video games, while this book is all over the place. There are some interesting bits but if you read a lot about video games already a lot of this will be stuff you already know. Also the book was published in 2016 in the US but written far before as a profiles on Zoe Quinn is missing the key harassment instigator she had to endure and a writeup of No Man's Sky and Sean Murray was obviously written pre-release as everyone is still super excited about the "limitless potential of the game".

Not a terrible book and it has some really interesting bits, and Parkin's writing is good throughout but if you're already a voracious consumer of Video Game media I would actually suggest Donovan's Replay as the more interesting book about gaming.

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first time I’ve read a book that was pretty great overall, but completely mislead itself with its title and back page. This book is, for no more than 1/3rd of its length, about death attributable to gaming. That was why I picked up the book. The other 2/3rds are great, but this book was not at all cohesive and it left me a little frustrated. This would have been a 4 star read if it had been billed as a collection of essays just about gaming and its myriad purposes for gamers.

Some notable quotes:

“Video games offer a cat’s cradle of interlocking systems, often based on those found in reality, for a player to wrestle and reckon with” (55)

“For a human who has experienced life‘s petty and major injustices, what better place is there to spend one’s time than in a virtual world, where struggle always leads to success, or effort, is repaid in-kind, where there is justice and glory for any and all who want it?” (87)

“ it can be a problem to get lost in fiction… That’s centered around manifest destiny and the idea that everyone is a good guy or a bad guy… sometimes we can cling onto the stories that were supposed to be for childhood into adulthood. In games, it seems unhealthy to me, that you usually play as a hero who can overcome all odds, and who must destroy anyone who stands in opposition or disagreement.” (155)

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought i knew a lot about video games before I started reading books about video games. Now I know I don't know much about video games. There is so much I have to learn. And I enjoy every minute of learning about video games. Probably not every minute but, its close.
There were so many stories in this book. Its hard for me to remember them all. I enjoyed reading about the plastic surgeon in New York who became a donkey Kong champion. I can't remember his name right now. I am a big Penn & tell fan and was surprised to learn that they had video games that came out on the sega CD; it was fun reading about desert bus.
It surprised me to learn about all the types of video games that people are making. I would never have thought about making any of those video games. It was also interesting to read about video game players in Iraq.
There is lot of information in this book that I did not know before I read it. I think if you like playing video games you will like this book.

[Alexander Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Up top, this is a great book. It takes a few chapters to hit it's stride, but poor anchoring of expectations gives the book a bad first impression.

What this book is not: an investigative report of the social, medical, and psychological causes of death surrounding games media. (This is the framing device that sometimes steps too far into validating political boogeymen and invalidating the art form.)

What this book IS: a series of personal essays about why people love games and love to make games. Exploring the limits of how games can explore difficult subjects, and advocating to not allow purity/accountability politics to censor this artform.

I feel this is a book with a great title and hook that had to change direction when the premise proved untenable. Unsurprisingly, video games dont cause people to die, and the evidence isn't there when we move past rhetoric and speculation. Since the hook didnt pan out, they changed focus, but they kept the punchy title.

[Dominick · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was simply a boring book. The ending itself made the entire report anticlimactic (giving an unsatisfying ending that showed the point of this book to be moot), and caused me to wonder: "what have I learned when finishing this mess?"

And the answer? Nothing!, and I think that has to do with the chapters having no real substance, all circling back to the overused argument of, "Video games are an art form too!" The first few chapters it was fine, but 200-some odd pages of retreading the same ground can get dull, and that's the entirety of this novel summarized.

I know I'm being a bit harsh on an author's first book, and that's why I didn't give it one star. I saw effort. The interviews, the actual reflective narratives is welcomed with open arms. Too bad it's lost in the whirlpool of overstayed similes and tangents that don't amount to anything!

[Chelsea · Rating 3 out of 5]

“It might seem strange that a human might choose to find their feet in a place that doesn’t exist”

I was really invested in this book when I first started it. I adore video games and I don’t tend to read non-fiction a lot, so I was excited to read about something I’m passionate about. I think if I had read it in a couple of sittings instead of it almost taking me a year to get through, I would have liked it more. I did find that a lot of the points brought up were extremely repetitive, and some of it was definitely outdated but the book discussed a lot of important impacts that video games have had on society and addressed a lot of misconceptions and concerns that I’ve definitely heard in my own gaming experience. Overall, I did enjoy my time reading this, it just was a little outdated and repetitive

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're wanting to read this to just hear cases and cases of people dying at their keyboards, this isn't that and thankfully because that'd be boring. In the beginning he does share some cases of that but the whole book explains reasons people make and play games. These reasons lead to the addiction that then ends to Death by Video Game. I've played games I never thought as gamer games like Sims, Zoo Tycoon and I've played gamer games (my definition) in World of Warcraft. I've lost hours playing these games not realizing how late or early it is. Forgetting to eat, not wanting to sleep. I sort of used this book to help me with quitting WoW it wasn't as much as of scare tactic as I first hoped but it did provide insight of why I have been so easily addicted to the game as well as others.

[Syksy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not a terribly good book. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who desires a deeper, actually intelligent and useful account on games.
Sure, there are some valuable insights and information to be found, and to a complete novice looking to aquire some basic knowledge of games this might be a start.
But to anyone who has studied games more thoroughly and scientifically, the book is mostly a bust. The language is more akin to a sensation news article than a credible source of information, and the truthfulness of the accounts is somewhat questionable.
It seems the writer has sacrificed actual facts and teaching others to sensationalism and snazzy one-liners.

[Ian Curran · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read for old people who believe the only point to playing video games for hours is with the intention to ROT.

This book lays out multiple, big-picture reasons to explain the aspects of gaming that grab us and keep us hooked, and how they've caused some people to lose their lives sitting in a chair.

Despite a couple real-life incidents, the book was way more touching and included less death than one might expect, and I learned some new favorite fun facts (what the Sims did for the gay community, and how Mario got his name).

Though I wouldn't consider myself addicted to video games, I certainly play a lot, and I loved this one.

[Michael Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title's a marketing gimmick: this is a compelling examination of what it is that causes us to sink hours into video games. Parkin is remarkably even-handed, neither forgiving gaming's worst excesses nor writing off its achievements. His examples are well-chosen and illuminating (ranging from AAA releases to tiny online indie games). Recommended for any gamers up for a bit of self-examination (of the non-joystick kind).

[Mat Francis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly I was ready to put the book down and never pick it back up after the introduction thinking it was just going to be another smear campaign against video games. Luckily I pushed through and found it to be a very interesting read. It doesn't just go through your normal media reaction to games, but also gives valid points and reasons behind people playing them.

Also I'm blown away at how people get to even play 48 hours at a time?