I would have posted about this earlier, but I read slower than Helen Keller when she’s wearing gloves.
Well Played 1.0is an anthology book of videogame critique, and probably one of the most interesting I’ve read. A group of twenty-two writers made up of designers, scholars, and bloggers wrote on subjects as wide-ranging as whyBioShock‘s story is a failure, to an indepth analysis of a game you’ve never heard of calledMines of Minos.
It’s got its low points, of course (it must be written somewhere in the halls of academia that any article written aboutMetal Gear Solidmust be so self-important and needlessly complex so as to be completely useless), but overall, I learned quite a bit from this book which alternately attempts to push forward the discussion on games as an aesthetic medium, while not losing sight of that which made them so alluring in the first place.
you may download the entire bookherefor free (minus images), or purchase a physical copyhere.
