What people have written about my Paper #3 topic so far

I’m fairly happy to say that I’ve been surprised by the amount of material that I’ve discovered regarding my paper topic so far.

While looking around for a good history of the Industry I stumbled upon The First Quarter followed up by The Ultimate History of Video Games both authored by Steven L. Kent. The former is a more in-depth approach to the history of gaming, talking about industry trends, business models and approaches, and overall addressing video game history from the non-pop culture perspective; the latter is very much involved in the popular culture of the industry, dealing less with the movers and shakers themselves and more with the public’s interest and involvement in the medium (it still deals with all the players involved, to be sure, but it’s tone and point are directed more to the public’s tastes, whereas The First Quarter is more geared towards gamers who have already expressed an interest in the topic).

Both of these works are a goldmine of information, not the least of which because they actually detail the history that I, despite being a gamer of wide breadth and experience, only know one side of, that of the consumer. Information regarding the producers, designers, programmers, business acquisitions, executive decisions – all of this is information that I only knew either in passing or to a middling degree, and these books have helped me explore and illuminate this subject even further.

An understanding of the video games culture, however, is more than just a retelling of its history, and its with that said that I thank my Writing 340 professor Mark Marino for lending me his book Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media. Whereas the previous two books touched on the history of the medium as it progressed from the arcade and the atari to the present day, Second Person is a much more academic approach to the subject material, analyzing and discussion the various perceptions and understandings that make up the industry. There are articles, for example, on “the early years of Dungeons and Dragons” and how that game influenced early gaming and the PRG market, or on Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and how Storytelling is an integral – and difficult – part of the game’s making process.

Second Person really helped me flesh out my argument in that i was able to expand the scope of my paper beyond simply a retelling of what has happened but to contextualize that “what-has-been” within the framework of our understandings of it. How can we discuss the subject of gaming as a storytelling art form if we do not first trace both where it has come from and how people now perceive it? Second Person allows me that privilege, to detail in further accounts how the games industry has evolved and where it is going, both in terms of culture and how we perceive it.

Our perceptions of the industry form half the battle of understanding it, the other half being records and accounts of where it has been, what it has gone through, and where it is going. Combined, The First Quarter, The Ultimate History of Video Games, and Second Person will allow me further insights into the topic of the industry as a culture and will thus better equip me to tackle the matter head on in the form of my paper.

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