Medium of the Video Game Mark J. P. Wolf editor.

Univ of Texas Pr; ISBN: 029279150X

I have never written a review before, so please bear with me.

The Medium of the Video Game is an anthology edited by Mark J. P. Wolf assistant professor in the Communication Department at Concordia University, Wisconsin. However, to say that Wolf is only the editor is really an understatement, Medium of the Video Game is really his baby. Of the nine essays in this book, five of them are his.

Of the remaining four essays, Steven L. Kent's “Super Mario Nation” first appeared in the September 1997 issue of American Heritage; Rochelle Slovin's “Hot Circuits” is about a 1989 exhibition of video games at the American Museum of the Moving Image; Charles Bernstein's “Play It Again, Pac-Man,” was written as the catalogue essay for the exhibition back in 1989; and finally Rebecca R. Tews (also from Concordia) contributes the essay, “Archetypes on Acid” which is an overview of psychological theories related to gameplay. I would like to point out that with the exception of Tew's article, the non-Wolf pieces are either written years ago, or are about things that happened years ago. This is not a bad thing as what the old articles have to say can be relevant, however it does signify something about the book as a whole: it feels dated.

Wolf's essays are odd in that he constantly makes the effort to call certain games CD-Rom games as if that has any real significance. Are the games for the (original) Playstation all that different than the games for the Nintendo 64? This constant references to “CD-Rom games” combined with essays written years ago that give this book the feel of a book that came out several years ago and not just (as of this writing) a few months ago.

Wolf is coming from a film theory perspective. Hence he is emphasizing the video part of the term videogame. More than this, however, Wolf is concerned with categorization. He lists eleven different types of spacial structures and forty-two different videogame genres. The problem with this is twofold. First some of his categories are questionable. Amongst his genres he lists diagnostics, demos and utilities. While it may be argued that demos are a distinct genre as they are trying to make you buy the full game (an argument I do not buy), I fail to see how diagnostics or utilities can be classified as genres of games of any sort. His rational seems to be that they come in cartridges or CD-ROM's like games and some game collectors collect them too, so they are the same as games (this chapter can be found here so you can read it an make up your own mind).

The other problem that I have with his categories is that he does not do anything with them. He just classifies. He does not (at least to my satisfaction) tell me why these categories matter. OK, so in some games all of the action is confined to one screen (as in a game like PONG) and in some the action wraps around (as in a game like Asteroids). So what? What are the aesthetic ramifications of that. How does that impact the player? What are the implications on this for the concerns of the player? He address these issues only briefly. His main concern is the listing and showing that there are analogous modes of spacial movement in cinema.

Wolfs essays are littered with examples of games that conform to his categories. However, I found it interesting that most of his examples came from the Atari 2600 or Nintendo NES era, which is one of the reasons I felt that the book seemed older than it really was. Two games that he seemed to bring up very often were computer games that I was not familiar with, Star Trek: Borg and Gadget. Since he brought them up as examples so often I could not help but find some reviews for them. Surprisingly both of these games were given poor reviews.

Star Trek: Borg is described as "that most dubious of game prospects - an 'interactive movie." The reviewer goes on to state that Borg "is infuriating not only because of the lousy (indeed, almost nonexistent) gameplay, but also because of the obvious tremendous expense and potential of this absolutely lame FMV-fest” that is “wrapped up in a quick-pick-a-path mess with the budget of a motion picture and the gameplay of... well, a motion picture.”

Similarly, one review of Gadget says, "Probably the biggest misconception about Gadget is that it's a game. Gadget is much more interactive fiction than game....Gadget is less of a game and more of a performance piece." Another review states that, "In "Gadget", the player essentially moves along a story, and does very little of anything involving "playing a game"....Gadget is perhaps best described as a visual book."

Now admittedly, Wolf never said anything about these being good games. However, I think that it is a telling statement about The Medium of the Video Game and the mentality behind it when two of the most used examples are said by others to be more like films and books than games.

There is one section that I do think deserves praise, the appendix. In the appendix, Wolf has has collected a fairly large listing of resources for video game research. He lists world wide websites, books, and periodical articles as well as emulators. It is a valuable resource.

In the end, I found this book to be very problematic. Many of the articles in it are dated. Others are little more than lists without the analysis that the categories seem to merit. Perhaps I have a personal bias against his perspective as I typically against applying film theory to video games since the vast number of similarities between the two forms deal with form, not content and are therefore superficial. In the end, perhaps that is the best way to describe this book: superficial.