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By way of we make money not art.com I’ve learned that Steven Poole is now giving away his book Trigger Happy for free! I’ve just started reading it myself and have been enjoying it thus far. It takes a broad look at video games as a medium that is as expressive and important as other artistic forms. It’s a perfect light read for someone not very familiar with video games. From the authors description:
“Trigger Happy is a book about the aesthetics of videogames — what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics.”
It’s offered under a CC license, for a limited time only. You can download a copy here.
2 responses so far ↓
1 all-books » Blog Archive » Super Trigger Happy // Nov 21, 2007 at 9:24 am
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBy way of we make money not art.com I’ve learned that Steven Poole is now giving away his book Trigger Happy for free! I’ve just started reading it myself and have been enjoying it thus far. It takes a broad look at video games as a medium that is as expressive and important as […] [...]
2 Ted // Nov 29, 2007 at 5:27 pm
I actually read this book (I own it in hardcover) back while I was working on my thesis. It was an interesting read. There are some particularly interesting sections in it. I enjoyed his discussion of how programmers create environments and limited actions that the player can choose and string together to form their strategy and, consequently, their experience of the game.
To clarify this he makes a comparison to chess that is quite effective. Further, he discusses how some designers don’t envision how far people will push the rules to create even more unique experiences with their tools.
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