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1. Raw and Relevant
   Deeply personal and incredibly insightful, Extra Lives is a book that I wasn’t expecting. I anticipated a light opinion based book revolving around a select few, and while the latter is true, the former couldn’t be further from an expression that could hope to do it justice.This is one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read, obviously owing to its brevity on one hand, but more truthfully to the opinions and ideas Tom Bissell presents. Overall, the book has the feel of a collection of essays, but they are woven together by a string of very personal memoir-esque happenings, particularly a topic that emerges in the Grand Theft Auto chapter.I also loved Tom’s use of advanced vocabulary. Certainly, looking up words in a dictionary constantly at first seemed tedious and interrupting to the great pacing, but I ended up learning a lot of great words that will be of great use in the future. For those with differing sentiments, you should know: Tom is an English Professor.Regardless, that in no way detracts or even significantly adds to the value of the book. Either way, it’s a masterpiece of accessible yet critical analysis of an ever-growing art form/cultural technological manifestation/ whatever you want to call it. Extra Lives will be remembered and has personally inspired me to look at video games with a sharper eye.

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2. Essential reading for anyone interested in serious video game criticism
   Twenty years ago, video games were designed for kids. Absolutely no one– not the video game makers, not our parents, and certainly not we, mashing buttons in our parents’ basements– foresaw what eventually happened: those kids never stopped. And now, for better or worse, here we are: adults in our thirties and even forties playing video games… and not sure how we feel about that!Extra Lives by Tom Bissell grapples with the main issue that adult gamers have: why, as grown ups, do we still spend so much darn time playing with electronic toys? Why, when we supposedly grew up, have too many video games not? Why are even the best of them filled with so much bad writing, tedious busywork, and meaningless nonsense? As Bissell aptly puts it, “Are games the problem? Or am I?”Bissell explores these questions through a mix of personal experience (his favorite games and what they made him think and feel), some theory (e.g. framed or guided narrative versus “ludonarrative,” or user-created experience and story), and interviews with many of North America’s leading game creators, including the guys behind Gears of War, Braid, Mass Effect, and others.Bissell’s a good, if occasionally self-indulgent writer (“the gimcrack story,” “the slipping, hourglass loss”, “as freefallingly unfamiliar”, etc). One Amazon review places the two or three worst sentences in the book on exhibit, but this seems unfair because 95% of the book reads much better, and Bissell’s wit earns him much in the way of forgiveness. Any adult gamer will nod in sympathy at his funny and on-point descriptions of:* having to re-play parts of games because he died so far from a save point (“I have had friends and relatives die, lovers stray, and money run out, but I would still place being torn apart by zombies with an hour and a half of unsaved Resident Evil gameplay behind me in the upper quartile of Personally Miserable Experiences”).* how to reconcile gaming with other adult activities and values (“More than any form of entertainment, video games tend to divide rooms into Us and Them. We are, in effect, admitting that we like to spend our time shooting monsters, and They are, not unreasonably, failing to find the value in that.”)* whether it’s worth analyzing games and writing about them in detail at all (“I then realized I was contrasting my aesthetic sensitivity to that of some teenagers about a game that concerns itself with shooting as many zombies as possible. It is moments like this that can make it so dispiritingly difficult to care about video games”).It’s a shame that there aren’t many venues for this kind of writing, thought, and criticism. I really enjoyed Extra Lives, and as the book ended I wished I could read Bissell’s or other ambitious writers’ extended takes on my personal favorite games. In his Appendix, Bissell briefly mentions a website called Crispy Gamer that was, for a couple years before its editors were fired, a home for intelligent writing on games. Bissell writes, “There was and is no other site with Crispy Gamer’s editorial ambition and independence, and it could very well be that there will not be another such site for a long, long time. The market simply cannot support such a site…” He also says that he’s bidding farewell to video game criticism, but just last week (June 2011) I saw his long and thoughtful review of the game L.A. Noire, which actually led me to find and buy this book, so hopefully Bissell hasn’t hung up his video game critic hat, after all.

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3. Part critique, part memoir. I loved it.
   I loved this book. It is a critique of video games as a medium. No critique of an art form is possible without giving the context of the one experiencing the art, so Bissell obliges and fills us in.I wish he’d spent more time talking to more indies than Jonathan Blow. Even in 2010 and before there was lots of great stuff happening in the indie scene. I suspect it’s because he didn’t play indies and that would’ve broken from the memoir-ish aspects of the book.Throughout the book Bissell, by turns, loves video games and hates them and is proud of them and picks at them and plays them and tries to get away from them. This guy loves video gaming, clearly. He also has no idea exactly why and (spoiler alert) the book does not give a clear answer. However, I think that’s a strength and a startling bit of honesty: this book is not going to be able to tell you why this art matters to you. That’s your answer to give. This is his. No objective truths here because there is no such thing. The currency of mattering is emotion.Bissell focuses a lot on narrative and whether or not games with narratives work. Clearly they don’t, he’ll say. Then he’ll provide a bit of narrative that worked. But, boy, that dialogue was terrible. But this voice acting in this other game was great. All these things are true at the same time of virtually all games. The most successful video games of all time have terrible formal structures or are super violent or racist or whatever. And we love them.The other reviews exemplify the ambivalence that Bissell displays in the book perfectly.One review talks about the storyline for Mass Effect like this: “…without a doubt a sci-fi story worthy of classic status regardless of medium…” but ends the review by saying “…[s]o why do games matter? They really don’t.” Which is it? Mind-expanding classic or light entertainment?Another review says the book is “entirely too academic” but “There is no sociological umbrella theory at work here, just Tom Bissell’s own experiences.” Again — which is it? Did you want to position games in some higher-level framework, or didn’t you?So, be warned. No answers, lots of ambiguity, more of a memoir than an instruction book. But, I think, also a great introduction to how deeply meaningful games can be for someone who doesn’t quite “get it”.

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4. Apesar do livro ter um ar um tanto arrogante do autor (leio diversos livros de jornalistas de games, este perde um pouco o tom), nos traz análises bacanas dos jogos, seus criadores, processo de criação e como certas mecânicas famosas são o que são hoje em dia. Podia ter pego mais leve na escrita erudita, entendemos que ele é inteligente, mas soou soberbo, bem como os julgamentos de valor exacerbados.

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5. Muy buen libroMe presento perspectivas del mundo de los videojuegos que nunca habia considerado antes.

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6. Very nice hardcover edition. Well written essays on storytelling in videogames. Arrived just in time for Christmas.

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7. Titre totalement trompeur, il s’agit juste d’une série de critiques de certains jeux vidéos, comme il s’en publie dans les magazines de gamers.

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8. I am not really enjoying this book. It is too much “operational” rather than explaining how come videogames are so popular and increasing in society. Wrong pick

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