In the first chapter, Bissell starts by introducing a quite interesting and central paradox of gaming, which is that they're often simultaneously totally engaging and totally enraging. Working towards that point, he writes this:
It is difficult to describe Oblivion without atavistic fears of being savaged by the same jean-jacketed dullards who in 1985 threw my AD&D Monster Manual II in Lake Michigan. (That I did not even play D&D, and only had the book because I like to look at the pictures, left my assailants unmoved.)Well thank goodness you didn't actually play D&D, Tom! That would be NERDY! Similar defensiveness is scattered throughout the book, making for a bizarre series of juxtapositions: on one page he assures us that gaming is important and meaningful; on the next he undermines his claim with a snide comment. At the end of the paragraph the first quote begins, Bissell writes of Oblivion: "It was an extra life, and I was grateful to have it."
The failure of Extra Lives is that it has too much of the former and not enough of the latter, and what falls between them is inconclusive musings. I kept hoping, hoping that Bissell would pull the wandering threads together and whip out a thundering conclusion explaining why games matter, but it never came. Every discussion of how different games had spoken to him petered off into silence (or snideness) rather than elucidating how this reflected on games as a whole, how it pointed the way towards better games, what it said about human beings as a game-playing species. In describing the most epic moment in his game career, where he risks his life to save his teammates against crushing odds, he says something remarkable: "I realized, then, vividly, that Left 4 Dead offered a rare example in which a game's theme (cooperation) was also what was encouraged in the actual flow of gameplay." Yes, narrative and ludonarrative† have to complement each other! That's something worth thinking about! How about other games? How does it work or not work in them? But it's not a thread he returns to, even when discussing ludonarrative dissonance in Bioshock. Instead, he continues to gnaw fruitlessly at the question of whether games ought to have a narrative.††
All of this frustration is topped by a wonderfully infuriating cherry: rampant, unquestioned sexism. Bissell never mentions his girlfriends except to note how they never supported or participated in his gaming habit, and his idea of a "surprisingly funny awards host" is one who tells any woman unable to get laid at the gaming conference to "hang up their vagina." At one point he is shocked to find attractive young women at a game company's offices. Had they branched out into modeling or escort services, he wonders? This, plus his anti-nerd digs and his literary pretensions is why I'm thoroughly convinced that I wouldn't want to hang out with the author.
In the end, Tom Bissell seems more interested in Tom Bissell than in the games he's playing, and really, I was in it for the games. People ought to be writing books on why games matter, and what we as a society can learn from them. But they shouldn't be writing books like this one.
* I will be interested in this question just as soon as someone can ask it without using it as a bludgeon to forward either their complaint about Kids These Days or their whine about Those People Who Think They're So Cool.
** Only if the game is GTA IV, apparently.
† Meaning the narrative that emerges from play.
†† Is "some games should! Other games shouldn't!" too obvious an answer?
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