Comments on: The Tell-Tale Brick

By: Infovore » links for February 27th

Infovore » links for February 27th — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:02:00 +0000

[...] Grand Text Auto » The Tell-Tale Brick "This is not a book about the VCS, nor breakout, nor video games and video game culture; it is a chronicle of the experience of that entity we might call “the player.” Oddly, there is little I can take from it in terms of approaches to video gaming or thoughts on the VCS Breakout. But it did enlarge my perspective and help me think about physiological, cognitive, and, let us say, monomaniacal aspects of video game play. Nervous, very dreadfully nervous Sudnow has been, but why would I say that he is mad?" Sudnow passed away very recently; I really ought to read his book, more than ever. (tags: games writing criticism books arcade davidsurnow ethnography breakout ) [...]

By: noah

noah — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 20:35:10 +0000

I'm installing at the Beall right now, so can't make a long comment, but I think it's important to see this book in the context of Sudnow's work. Ways of the Hand talks about how he developed his ability at improvised jazz piano. It's not just a removed, mental ability -- much of it is "in the hands." In Pilgrim in the Microworld Sudnow learns to play Breakout. He tries to analyze it, and reason it mentally, but learns increasingly that it's in the body. Not just in the hands, as with the piano, but especially in the connection between the hands and the eyes. Anyway, I could write much more, but I certainly agree with Nick that it's a fascinating book.

By: andrew

andrew — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 18:02:02 +0000

Don't miss breakout broken down in Gamasutra last month.

By: michael

michael — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:32:18 +0000

This book has been on my reading list for awhile (Noah first turned me onto it, in some hotel room we were sharing somewhere I can’t remember). Your review has made me even more curious to read it, partly to see if it’s really true that “there is little I can take from it in terms of approaches to video gaming or thoughts on the VCS Breakout.” I find this disappointing. What I had been hoping to get out of the book, besides a gripping narrative (which it sounds like it does deliver), is an account of someone trying to break the black box of the code (to see through a box, darkly…), to become as intimately familiar with the behavioral physics of the system as the implementers. And to the degree that all videogame playing requires this kind of implicit reverse engineering, such an account could perhaps provide fodder for theorizing this reverse engineering (not to mention the process of authoring so as to enable and constrain such reverse engineering), that is, a software studies account of the relationship between code and player. At least, these were the thoughts that went through my head when Noah first told me about this book. Perhaps I shouldn’t read it and should just continue to enjoy the virtual book in my head.

By: Dennis G. Jerz

Dennis G. Jerz — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 02:39:05 +0000

We all approach our obsessions differently. No references to watching other players’ techniques? Could that have been an editorial choice, to emphasize the monomania? Or is that pretty much what monomania is?

Anyway, a good review.