The art of failure: an essay on the pain of playing video games

摘要

This book was very disappointing. It is a 124-page essay on "the pain of playing video games," only it isn't an essay. There are 11 pages of notes and 11 more pages of bibliography at the end, suggesting that it was intended as a research report rather than an essay, but was dropped back to essay form because the internal arguments did not rely sufficiently on the references. But, references and structure aside, the internal arguments are flawed as well. In fact, there are so many flaws that it is difficult to point them out, as they are the very structure of the rambling, wooly thinking that makes up this short volume. Nonetheless, a few examples should suffice.