Slashdot review is up

More reviews have popped up. Slashdot posted theirs, accompanied by the usual Slashdot comment thread full of vituperation. 🙂

With the endless rehashing of game and design concepts currently in circulation and parent groups growing ever more shrill at the release of morally ambiguous titles, Raph Koster’s book is a refreshing read. The book is an unpretentious examination of what it is that makes a game a game. He steps beyond the dehumanizing aspects of game mechanics to look at games and their designers in a broader societal context. If for no other reason that that, Theory of Fun is worth a look to read the opinion of someone who gives a damn.

The Slashdot review resulted in a big spike in sales on Amazon.com, and the book landed at #2 in the Game Development charts. Unexpected and pleasing, of course.

Another interesting take, which raps me for overemphasizing cognitive science, is the one by
Steven Shaviro:

I feel I learned a lot from Theory of Fun in Game Design; Koster provoked me to think a lot more than most academic books tend to do. (I hope that doesn’t seem like too backhanded a compliment). It’s only against this background of general enthusiastic approval that I will note what seems to me to be the book’s major limitation. That is its overall assumptions based on cognitive psychology…

Lastly, a brief five-star review from the Midwest Book Review.

I spent Monday up at USC, invited there by Amy Jo Kim, who with Tracy Fullerton is teaching a class there on multiplayer game design. It was refreshing to be in front of students again–it’s been a long time–and I very much enjoyed it. I can easily see myself going back to teaching again someday, if I can just get out of having to grade papers…