How to Talk about Videogames

A Book Review

Video games can resemble movies and mountains, novels and the novelty of a trip to France, and even people. However, because playing them evokes commonalities of form and effect with a multitude of other experiences, society largely treats the video game as a patchwork media monster rather than a distinct medium. In How to Talk about Videogames, Ian Bogost puts forward an initially puzzling idea: that to make sense of what video games are, what they do, and how they do it, game critics should treat their subjects like toasters. Continue Reading