Customer Reviews

Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture from Geek to Chic

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

These are very charming faux-reviews from Brad and Borland's drinking buddies, but the truth about this tome is less pleasing.

Marginally better than the recent "Masters of Doom," if only because the authors don't want so bad to be Tracy Kidder, this book is 50% Lord British, and 50% fanboy groveling at the altar of Quake & Everquest. If I didn't know better, after reading this I'd think the entire history of computer games pre-1990 revolved around Origin Software. In fact, you get the impression that the authors originally intended to pen a biography of that colorful Texan, Lord British, but must have been pressured into commercializing their work; perhaps the publishing house insisted, at the last minute, that they pad it with some modern-day schlock about FPS clans and John Carmack.

Bound together with the requisite Wired mind-barf about building virtual communities, this revisionist look at old computer games is poor cultural history, for it views the '80s culture only in terms of how it led to today's MMORPGs and FPSs. You really don't get a sense of the richness of what computer games were in the '80s, when there were dozens of oddball genres. A much better treatment of the era is in Levy's book "Hackers," where he perfectly reconstructs the world of Sierra Online -- the kind of graphic adventure company that doesn't quite fit into "Geek to Chic"'s hipsterish computer Darwinism.

Look for it soon in the 30 percent off rack at CompUSA.

I was born with the use of my thumbs and therefore i can neither hold nor fire real handguns. Playing video games on the computer internet has been pretty much my "surrogate grandmother" as it were for that aspect of my otherwise well rounded personality. John Borland's book took me on one crazy hamster wheel ride through my last 17 years of gaming. I no longer feel (as the Fresh Prince once said) "parents just don't understand. Not that Mr. Borland is some kind of father figure to me, but if he were to consider adopting me I certainly wouldn't try to sue him. I guess what I'm saying is I'm lonely and this book made me feel... well... like I belong, goshdernit! Like a 14th century monk, Borland illuminates the tired pages of video game history with golden, shiny, fancy ever-so-curly letters that make you want to treat your brain to a tonsure. Issues like Columbine, Censorship, Technology and Why Rich Geeks Think Ferrari's Are Some Kind Of Big Deal, are all handled easily by Borland's deft opposable digits. Kudos to Mr. Borland, and to his co-auther Mr. King. If you love to read, you'll love this book.

I've loved this book. There is much in-depth information about the industry and the everlasting delight of the gaming-gourmand. Perhaps it could present more about butter, that relentless ally of the culinary arts, the faithful symbol of good living. Not only because it has been regarded from time immemorial as a food fit for the gods, but becuase its use appears to have been divinely recommended and its users promised certain immunities against evil. Through time and across the globe, it has had a scared quality. King examines it from the ancient Fertile Crescent to the present day, as it has symbolized the powerful, life-giving and sacred, the good, the happy, the healthy and pure. He goes to China where according to Buddhist teacher Tï¿ien-tï¿ai, who was active about the year 600, the dharma, or teachings, could be understood in terms of successive stages of refinement analogous to the stages by which ghee (clarified butter, or literally, ï¿liberationï¿) is derived from milk. Just as milk comes from a cow, cream comes from milk, butter comes from cream, melted butter comes from butter, and ghee is liberated from melted butter, the 12 divisions of the canon come from the Buddha. We also learn Tibetan monks have made intricate, colored butter sculptures as part of a tradition that is as old as Buddhism.It has sustained lives, cultures and civilizations for millennia. This culinary treasure as old as King Tutï¿s tomb. "She brought forth butter in a lordly dish" (Judges 5:25). A jug of wine, a loaf of bread ï¿ and butter! Pure butter is produced today essentially as it was in King Tutï¿s time, though butter made of milk from cows instead of camels or water buffaloes. In 3500 BC, the people of Sumer shook cream in a vertical churn. And butter was important enough to write about -- records have been carved in stone. According to ancient references, butter was used not only in cooking, but in medicine, cosmetics and even sacrificial worship rituals. Through the centuries, butter became so well liked, it was almost a sin to eat it on certain days, hence the DUNGEONS from the title. From the 14th century onward in Europe, popes and people who liked butter on fast days had to buy special dispensations from the church. A truly holy food. Brad speaks with knowledge and reverence about pixels, people, dreams and cutting-edge tech, and how this edge spreads the most important of all: BUTTER.

This encyclopedic masterwork, this magnum opus, this testament to our weaker, paler & less physically attractive cousins - it is more a paradigm for the new anthropology of nerdity than simply a book. Borland et. al. have, through years of painstaking participant-observation study in this dungeonmaster-ish, Ultima-like, Everquest-addicted card-collecting subculture, brought together, in a single tremendous gotterdammerung of a bound mass of pulp product, the most complete and far-reaching study of what makes the nerds who they are and who, someday, they may become.

Borland's book - really, more a testament, an unearthing, a magnetic field, a mass of energy, thunder & lightning, a tremendous and moving examination of the forces that shape all humankind and specifically its pale, glasses-wearing and physically unimpressive subspecies than just a book - is easily one of the finest investigations into geekdom ever made - at least by a (supposed) non-geek. Reading this monument to all things dungeonmasterish & Ultima-like, I was struck by a thought which at the time seemed very profound but later turned out to be completely false: all we are is dust in the wind. But this turned out to have been someone else's though first, and is purely tangential to Borland's MAGNUM OPUS, this encyclopedia of sunlight-shunning nerdity. I can only say this: if this book were an amusement park, the world would not measure up to its rides. Pure 100% content, this book is a winner - four stars.

Borland's book - really, more a testament, an unearthing, a magnetic field, a mass of energy, thunder & lightning, a tremendous and moving examination of the forces that shape all humankind and specifically its pale, glasses-wearing and physically unimpressive subspecies than just a book - is easily one of the finest investigations into geekdom ever made - at least by a (supposed) non-geek. Reading this monument to all things dungeonmasterish & Ultima-like, I was struck by a thought which at the time seemed very profound but later turned out to be completely false: all we are is dust in the wind. But this turned out to have been someone else's though first, and is purely tangential to Borland's MAGNUM OPUS, this encyclopedia of sunlight-shunning nerdity. I can only say this: if this book were an amusement park, the world would not measure up to its rides. Pure 100% content, this book is a winner - four stars.

Borland's book - really, more a testament, an unearthing, a magnetic field, a mass of energy, thunder & lightning, a tremendous and moving examination of the forces that shape all humankind and specifically its pale, glasses-wearing and physically unimpressive subspecies than just a book - is easily one of the finest investigations into geekdom ever made - at least by a (supposed) non-geek. Reading this monument to all things dungeonmasterish & Ultima-like, I was struck by a thought which at the time seemed very profound but later turned out to be completely false: all we are is dust in the wind. But this turned out to have been someone else's though first, and is purely tangential to Borland's MAGNUM OPUS, this encyclopedia of sunlight-shunning nerdity. I can only say this: if this book were an amusement park, the world would not measure up to its rides. Pure 100% content, this book is a winner - four stars.

Borland's book - really, more a testament, an unearthing, a magnetic field, a mass of energy, thunder & lightning, a tremendous and moving examination of the forces that shape all humankind and specifically its pale, glasses-wearing and physically unimpressive subspecies than just a book - is easily one of the finest investigations into geekdom ever made - at least by a (supposed) non-geek. Reading this monument to all things dungeonmasterish & Ultima-like, I was struck by a thought which at the time seemed very profound but later turned out to be completely false: all we are is dust in the wind. But this turned out to have been someone else's though first, and is purely tangential to Borland's MAGNUM OPUS, this encyclopedia of sunlight-shunning nerdity. I can only say this: if this book were an amusement park, the world would not measure up to its rides. Pure 100% content, this book is a winner - four stars.