All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture

This book is a good read for anybody who is fascinated with video games beyond just playing them. The book begins with a well written introduction to the growth of gaming culture and the key players who impacted it with their successes and failures. The first few chapters are dedicated to the gaming pioneers and the systems/games they created, from Tennis for Two to Atari to Miyamoto and Nintendo. I think the beginning chapters of the book were the most intriguing, informative and enjoyable bits. The rest of the book remains solid and informative, but begins losing it's luster with the chapter dedicated to Ken Levine and Bioshock, and the subsequent chapters never seemed to bring back the magic I felt the beginning of the book had. It's not that I didn't enjoy the chapter on Bioshock (or the game itself,) but I felt that it was too long (and I believe the longest chapter in the book at 24 pages,) and wasn't wholly deserving of all the attention the book gave it. Shortly following Bioshock was a chapter on Rockstar, sandbox games and GTA, which I thoroughly enjoyed.I was also disappointed in the lack of, what I believe, were key components in video game history that were barely referenced in the book, or ignored completely. The author makes a few remarks about Sega/Dreamcast and the Nintendo 64, but he just lightly touches base on them. The fact that Sega wasn't given a chapter in this book is probably one of it's biggest faults, in my opinion. Who wouldn't want to read about the coming of Sega and how it ultimately failed? It would have been great to read about everything Sega pioneered and why it all went wrong. From the Game Gear to Dreamcast with it's online capabilities, and the often forgotten but revolutionary Sega Channel. Or to read about the Nintendo 64 and how it reshaped classic games, giving them thriving, beautiful 3D worlds, and paving a way for first person shooters on consoles with Goldeneye. None of these things are discussed in the book.However, the book has much more solid information and rich history than it has oversights, and in the end I was glad I picked up the book and gave it a read. It's a wonderful, personal view into a world that millions of people enjoy, but not many understand or are knowledgeable about. Many people can tell you who Peter Jackson is, but not Peter Molyneux, even though millions of people have played his games. Even worse, a million housewives around the world could probably tell you the names of hundreds of celebrity actors and actresses, but wouldn't recognize the name Will Wright, as they sit on their PC clicking away to build a house for their virtual Sim. This book turns those developers into celebrities and rewards you with a rare glimpse into how they came to be. If you have a knack for staying up until the A.M. and soaking in the radiation from your monitor or television, then you should do yourself a favor and pick up this book to learn a little more about the medium you love.

I usually don't review other writers' books, but this one was so filled with errors that I was truely dissapointed while reading it. I'll list some of them. I have to say that, although I enjoyed the book, the errors were very distracting.Page 1: "In 1966, Ralph Baer, a short, bespectacled man with a deep, radio-quality voice and a sharp wit, had been a successful engineer for thirty years."If this is true, then Baer became a successful engineer in 1936 when he was 14 years old, and two years before he fled Nazi Germany.Page 20: "The testing ground for Pong, the very first arcade game, was a newly opened bar in the Silicon Valley."But Pong was not the first arcade game, Computer Space was. And the book says that on the following page.Page 34: "At first, no one was interested in the home version (of Pong), even when the game was shown to retailers at New York City's famous and chaotic Toy Fair. Part of the Toy Fair debacle was due to Bushnell and his people being wet behind the ears. Their space for Toy Fair wasn't in the building at Broadway and Twenty-third Street where most business was done. It was far away (in the Jacob Javits Convention Center). Few stopped by."Home Pong came out in 1975. The Jacob Javits Convention Center opened in 1986.Page 42-43: "Wozniak pocketed $375, but Jobs kept the remainder of the $5,000. When Wozniak discovered what Jobs had been paid, his hacker heart, which had led him to work on Breakout for art's sake, was broken. Wozniak never really trusted Jobs completely again - even though they went on to create Apple together"Wozniak didn't learn about how Jobs screwed him on Breakout until 1984, years after they started Apple, when he learned about it while reading a book about Atari during a flight to Fort Lauderdale.Page 45: "Stella, with its eight-bit graphics processor, became the Atari 2600, proudly nicknamed the Video Computer System (VCS)."It wasn't nicknamed the Video Computer System, it was called that. It didn't start being called the 2600 until 1982, after the 5200 was released.Page 53: "On December 8, 1982, after horrible earnings were reported to the public, the stock plummeted. .....No eyes were sewn shut, and no one had to lie prostrate on the ground, but New Atari owner Jack Tramiel, formerly president of Commodore International, butchered the staff from two thousand to a few hundred."Tramiel bought Atari in 1984.Page 242: "In 1999, much of Sony Online Entertainment's early work was with casual games......Sony's PlayStation 2, which played games and DVDs, had been released that past March to great acclaim......Some of this chapter is informed by my firsthand experience in working with the casual genre while employed at Sony Online Entertainment."The PS2 was released in Asia in March 2000 and in North America in October 2000.

I have been playing video games since the 80's, when I got my first Amiga computer. I remember being wowed by Space Quest III, and how interactive the world that Sierra created was. I grew to love their catalog of games, including King's Quest, Police Quest and others. That company was firmly cemented in my mind as a quality creator of adventure games. My knowledge of Sierra pretty much stopped there, but after reading Goldberg's colorful view into the Williams' journey to video game royalty, I started to experience an even deeper nostalgic appreciation of Sierra.That is just the tip of the iceberg as this book doesn't just discuss the technical wonderment of games, it delves into the people BEHIND the video games. For someone who loves biographies as much as I do video games, this was pure heaven.I had such a different opinion of who I thought Rockstar Games was, and now I have an entirely different viewpoint thanks to the information and stories. PopCap games was just a shallow facade for some pretty amazing casual games (I love me some Plants vs. Zombies), and now I appreciate the trio of video game fans that have risen to the head of the massive company.If you have enjoyed being a part of the decades of growth that video games have experienced and are interested in the lives (including the highs and lows) of the folks that have made this experience possible, then you will love this book.

[Lo primero justifico nota y título: los primeros 2/3 del libro son de 5 estrellas, mientras que el último 1/3 es de 2,5-3 estrellas... Por eso un 4 sobre 5.]Cogí el libro con bastantes ganas por ser un recorrido de la historia de los videojuegos y de su impacto social y cultural pero basado en títulos, editores y plataformas emblemáticos y puntuales, como Pong, Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong, Wii, etc.Los primeros 2/3 del libro (hasta el capítulo 12) son una gozada: capítulos cortos, dinámicos, entretenidos, trufados de anécdotas... Mención especial al capítulo de Sierra y los King's Quest, una lectura muy interesante y muy bien llevada.Pero cuando llegas al capítulo 12... el número de páginas por capítulo crece, en algunos casos mucho, y se hace más lento y farragoso de leer. Bioshock, el capítulo 12, no habla prácticamente del juego, sino de su creador, la lucha por publicarlo, las editoras y el proceso de creación (no entraré en más detalle) de un modo demasiado exhaustivo como para ser dinámico, entretenido y trufado de anécdotas (corto desde luego no es en comparación), con datos económicos, de recursos humanos, etc. Y a partir de ahí trata menos sobre el impacto socio-cultural propiamente dicho y más sobre los procesos internos de las compañías y de los creadores, tal vez porque de eso el autor sabe un poco (ex de Sony, participó en la creación del Everquest (gran capítulo del libro) y de la plataforma original de juegos casuales de dicha compañía). El texto se arrastra lentamente por un exceso de páginas y un baile de cifras hasta una conclusión que, siendo un libro del 2011, se ha quedado ya muy atrás (esto no es culpa del autor, lógicamente... Lo que tiene el paso del tiempo).Un libro recomendable en un 66%, parte que se disfruta muchísimo ya que añade anécdotas propias de un periodista y reviewer que ha hablado con los protagonistas a lo que ya se puede leer en el The Ultimate History of the Video Games (que también he leído, así que hablo con conocimiento de causa), haciendo que puedas ver los fríos datos desde un punto de vista más humano, fresco y subjetivo.El último 33% (7 de 19 capítulos) se me hizo lento y farragoso, sin la frescura de lo anterior, y reconozco que los últimos 4 capítulos llegué a leerlos en diagonal...En resumen: ¿recomendable? Sí. Es una lectura que he disfrutado mucho en su mayor parte. El pero, la parte del final no creo que llegue a interesar a economistas porque, aunque presenta cifras de balance, lo hace de un modo muy general y sin entrar en mucho detalle, y, al mismo tiempo, son datos poco interesantes para un lector interesado por el impacto socio-cultural que ha conllevado el auge del mundo de los videojuegos.

Der Buchtitel, ein Zitat aus einem obskuren Sega Konsolenspiel mit denkwürdig skurriler Übersetzung ins englische mit einer gewissen popkulturellen Berühmtheit, hat mit dem Inhalt des Werks aber absolut nicht zu tun. Weder das Spiel, noch seine Macher oder ein anderer historischer Zusammenhang werden im Buch verarbeitet.Der Band ist keine akribische Historie der Computer- und Videospiel Geschichte, auch wenn die Kapitel chronologisch angeordnet von den 1950iger Jahren bis in die Jetztzeit reichen. Vollständigkeit war dem Autor kein Kriterium, weder im Hinblick auf technologische Entwicklung, Genres, Firmen oder Entwickler. All das kommt vor, im Fokus stehen in jedem Kapitel jedoch ein oder zwei Spieldesigner. Die ausgewählten, darunter sehr bekannte wie Shigeru Miyamoto, Roberta Williams, Will Wright, aber auch, zumindest mir bis dahin namentlich nicht bekannte, wie die 7th Guest Macher Rob Landeros und Graeme Devine, stehen im Mittelpunkt.Der Autor zeichnet den Werdegang der Entwickler nach, was sie angetrieben hat, unter welchen Umständen sie ihr Spiel entwickelt haben, die Firmen die sie gegründet oder gearbeitet haben. Dabei hat jeder dieser Designer an einem aus historischer Sicht, wegweisendem bzw. bedeutsamen Spiel gearbeitet, oder steht für eine wesentlichen Aspekt des Game-Designs, wie etwa Will Wright mit seinen offenen Spielkonzepten / Simulationen.Das Buch ist voller Anekdoten und heute unglaublich klingender Umstände unter denen Spiele entwickelt wurden. Leidenschaft, Hingabe aber auch Naivität und Goldgräberstimmung werden von Harold Goldberg gut eingefangen. Natürlich wird Lesern die bereits andere Bücher wie etwa Replay: The History of Videogames" oder The Ultimate History of Videogames" gelesen haben vieles bekannt sein. Wobei wie gesagt der Fokus hier stark auf die Personen gelegt ist und die großen Zusammenhänge in Genres, Technologie oder Firmen, nur nebenbei abgehandelt werden.Das überzeugt nicht durchgängig, da Goldberg hin und wider zur Geschwätzigkeit neigt und der Fan in ihm durchbricht wo etwas Abstand zum Gegenstand gut getan hätte. Auch hätte ich stellenweise doch gerne eine etwas weiter Perspektive gehabt. Aber das kann man dem Autor eigentlich nicht vorwerfen, da gerade der Fokus auf die Akteure sein Hauptanliegen ist.Trotzdem ein unterhaltsames, sehr lesbares Buch dem ein etwas strengerer Lektor hinsichtlich Stil und inhaltlicher Wiederholungen gut getan hätte.

Man merkt dem Autor die Liebe zum Videospiel in jeder Zeile an. Ich habe schon einige Bücher über die Videospielgeschichte gelesen und kannte schon die meisten Fakten. In diesem Buch schafft es der Autor jedoch bekannte Fakten mit viel Persönlichem aus dem Leben der Akteure anzureichern und spannend zu erzählen. Es gehört zur Pflichtlektüre jedes ernsthaften Videospielers zusammen mit "The History of Video Games" (Kent), "High Score" (Wilson) und "Masters of Doom" (Kushner).

Pocas veces el tema se toma con seriedad, este libro lo hace, muy buena lectura

sehr spannend, wenn man sich für pc games interessiert - so werden einem erst viele zusammenhänge klar. Das Buch ist spannend geschrieben, leider erfährt man durch das Buch auch eines: Geld regiert die Welt und somit auch die Computerspielindustrie. Super Lektüre für zwischendurch!