Product Description

Fully revised and updated to include Sony's PlayStation 2

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #523083 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Trigger Happy, Steven Poole's substantial examination of the world inside your console, combines an exhaustive history of the games industry with a more subtle look at what makes certain kinds of games more engaging than others. For example, what works in which genres--the RPG (role-playing game) versus the god game--and the relationship of video games to other forms of media.

A writer and composer, Poole makes the case that video games--like films and popular music--deserve serious critical treatment. "The inner life of video games--how they work--is bound up with the inner life of the player. And the player's response to a well-designed video game is in part the same sort of response he or she has to a film, or to a painting: it is an aesthetic one". Trigger Happy is packed with references not just to games and game history but to writers and theorists who may never have played a video game in their lives, from Adorno and Benjamin to Plato. At times this approach verges on the pedantic, dwelling at length on points that will seem obvious to serious gamers ("We don't want absolutely real situations in video games. We can get that at home"; "The fighting game, like fighting itself, will always be popular"). Nonetheless, Poole's book may be favoured bedside reading for both the keen gamer and the armchair philosopher looking to understand this cultural phenomenon. --Liz Bailey

Amazon.co.uk Review
Steven Poole's substantial examination of the world inside your console combines an exhaustive history of the games industry with a more subtle look at what makes certain kinds of games more engaging than others. For example, what works in which genres--the RPG (role-playing game) versus the god game--and the relationship of video games to other forms of media.

A writer and composer, Poole makes the case that video games--like films and popular music--deserve serious critical treatment. "The inner life of video games--how they work--is bound up with the inner life of the player. And the player's response to a well-designed video game is in part the same sort of response he or she has to a film, or to a painting: it is an aesthetic one". Trigger Happy is packed with references not just to games and game history but to writers and theorists who may never have played a video game in their lives, from Adorno and Benjamin to Plato. At times this approach verges on the pedantic, dwelling at length on points that will seem obvious to serious gamers ("We don't want absolutely real situations in video games. We can get that at home"; "The fighting game, like fighting itself, will always be popular"). Nonetheless, Poole's book may be favoured bedside reading for both the keen gamer and the armchair philosopher looking to understand this cultural phenomenon.--Liz Bailey

The Guardian
'A critical contribution to our understanding of a still growing entertainment phenomenon which just won't go away . . . Essential reading.'

Customer Reviews

Deep, philosophical - an important point omitted
As an avid gamer from the early eighties I acquired this book on the pretence that it would give me a better understanding of my addiction. Firstly I must say that the book does exactly what it says, it presents an incredibly well researched study on the life of the video game and places itself as a great guide for any video game company wishing to understand their niche a little better. However, it is this word "Understanding" that I have such an issue with - quite simply, most of it I didn't understand! I consider myself clever, even academic and my vocabulary is above average but did this guy swallow the Encyclopedia Brittanica, Oxford English Dictionary and every book on Philosophy ever written? In his self-obsessed goal of stringing together his findings and opinions with as long a words as he can possibly muster, he has failed to achieve the most important part of writing a book i.e. keep the reader interested. I literally had to kick myself into finishing this book and many times fell asleep reading it. Occasionally I would read sentences or paragraphs out to my wife and she'd frown and say "What does that mean?" - well, my apologies for not having the vocabulary needed to enjoy this read but it just didn't work for me.

A good, if rather academic study into the art of gaming.
This 'revised' edition of Steven Poole's work makes an interesting read for anyone fascinated in the relatively short history of gaming. The decrease in price, plus the inclusion of coverage of Sony's PlayStation 2 launch certainly make it more attractive than the previous edition. The book is fairly comprehensive, covering gaming hardware through the ages, how gaming dynamics have changed (for better and worse) and who were the major players in this evolution. This approach makes it fairly generic, but Poole handles the themes well, using discussions with major luminaries such as Jeremy Smith of Tomb Raider fame and reflecting on how he believes games can be made better. Because of this it may not capture an unforgettable period in as much detail as David Sheff's Game Over (which handled Nintendo's business up to the birth of the SNES console), but Poole's enthusiasm is contagious, and his knowledge and experience unquestionable. Where he lets himself down is in his persistence in exemplifying certain basic examples of the genres; Tomb Raider and Resident Evil are constantly referenced, it seems, simply because they are good games with one or more major and easy-to-spot flaws. However, apart from the aforementioned Game Over and The First Quarter by Steven L. Kent (available from Amazon.com on import, and perhaps the most appealing book ever to cover the topic), this work is something that should still be in any discerning gamer's collection.

Not a history, but a superbly original cultural study
If all you want is a simple history of video games, this is not your book. Try Steven L Kent's The First Quarter or Leonard Herman's Phoenix.

Poole only covers as much factual history as he needs to in order to set the groundwork for his fascinating arguments. What Trigger Happy is trying to do is to figure out what makes video games unique as a brand new art form.

To do this, he covers many areas with startling, thought-provoking originality. The links between games and cinema, between games and narrative, and even between games and the history of painting, are all explored with a great deal of insight.

The book is arranged thematically, so that each chapter covers a certain way of looking at videogames. Eventually Poole lets rip with an incredible chapter about semiotics - which may sound forbidding and dryly "academic", but is actually the most useful new theory of just what makes games unique that I've ever seen.

The bottom line is that it is unfair to compare Poole's book to other books on gaming, most of which are more or less simple histories. If you liked the wit and style of J C Herz's Joystick Nation, though, then Poole delivers all that - with less annoying, flip Americanisms and far deeper conceptual thinking. This really is a brilliant, and (as the blurb says, rightly for once) ground-breaking book.