There was a time when, in order to create a video game, you had to be from a particular background. Usually, you were an engineer from a good school, or at the very least someone with a strong technical understanding of the inner workings of computers. Even now, in a day where games are played by a wide field of individuals, the industry is largely dominated by triple-A games for a white, male demographic.
This doesn’t have to continue. “Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Dropouts, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You are Taking Back an Art Form” is here to tell you why. @@http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Videogame-Zinesters-Drop-outs-Housewives/dp/1609803728@@ @@longest book name ever?@@
The book begins with a stern section: Author Anna Anthropy lays out all of her problems with the game industry, ranging from its deeply consumerist underpinnings to the lack of diversity of not only characters, but stories. The crucial part is how she offers up a clear solution.
You need to make a game. Yes, you.
“Rise of the Videogame Zinesters” is, first and foremost, an argument. Over its eight chapters Anthropy details why the overblown sword-and-sorcery and military epics that are the most common narratives of games need to be supplanted with personal stories: stories about losing loved ones, about grappling with change, about politics or about whimsy.
“Rise of the Videogame Zinesters” is written with the layperson in mind. The prose is clear, readable and jargon-light, and the examples of games are given thorough explanations. Anthropy’s critique of Tetris as a narrative is particularly excellent, as a game so abstract and game-y is viewed with the perspective we view so many other works of art with.
At the same time, “Rise of the Videogame Zinesters” cites many examples of underground games that, though amateurishly made, actually engage with human experience in ways that are clever or interesting. At the same time, it dissects them and provides the audience with the language to do the same.
Anthropy, a prolific developer in her own right, details the creation process of some of her own games, such as “Calamity Annie.” On the surface, it’s the story of a female cowboy gunning down bandits, collecting bounties and romancing a lady named Valentine.
At the period of her life in which “Annie” was made, Anthropy was attending the Guildhall at Southern Methodist University in Plano, Texas, believing that a professional game development education was necessary for her to make games.
Anthropy butted heads with her professors frequently and the Guildhall’s conservatism and rigid adherence to the game industry’s “crunch cycle” proved stifling for her, all the while she was separated from her girlfriend. Likewise “Calamity Annie” is about an angry young woman in an unfriendly land, who, because of her drive, finds love in the end.
It’s because of stories like these that “Rise of the Videogame Zinesters” is such an important book. Not only is it about the democratization of video games as an expressive medium, but rather the importance of the simple act of creation. Most books about games creation are about theory and specific tool use, but “Rise of the Videogame Zinesters” is endlessly practical. The book offers an appendix that contains a number of games creation environments, with explanations of their strengths and shortfalls.
My personal favorite chapter, however, is near the end of the book, which focuses on the process of creating a single game from scratch. She guides through picking your tools, choosing a character, creating things to interact with and polishing the product in terms general enough to encompass just about any simple game you could make. For a process that can be so abstract, Anthropy has a way of rendering it in the most concrete and meaningful terms possible, giving specific examples and important advice.
If “Rise of the Videogame Zinesters” doesn’t make you want to get up and create, you probably don’t have a functioning brain stem. It’s a call to action stated eloquently and with great conviction, while at the same time being approachable.
If you’re at all on the fence about games or even if you don’t have any intention of making a game in your life, I still encourage you to get this book. There’s still plenty to take away, no matter who you are.
Grade: A