507 pages
English language
Published Sept. 5, 2015
A groundbreaking anthology of short stories from award-winning writers and game-industry titans who have embarked on a quest to explore what happens when video games and science fiction collide. From text-based adventures to first-person shooters, dungeon crawlers to horror games, these twenty-six stories play with our notion of what video games can be-and what they can become-in smart and singular ways.
Very mixed bag. I had hoped to be inspired to play games just like NGJ had done back when it was a thing but, alas, it did not.
Some of the stories are really hit or miss, as with any anthology, but boy are the hits good. From incredibly unique takes on traditional game mechanics like NPC, to very important stories like Stats, that really need to be told, this anthology really had me pouring through the pages. It's a little front heavy, and the last 4th of the book is noticeably weaker than the stories at the start, but still worth a read through. This definitely gave me value for money in a sub-genre I hope to see expanding in the near future.
