Here I am in the Tom Bradley International Terminal at LAX, waiting for my connection to Taipei, which has now been delayed by 2 hours. This means that I’ve already knocked off the first book I brought with me ont he trip, which is Aaron Ruby and Heather Chaplin’s Smartbomb.

I spent several hours with Heather in an amazing interview a couple of years ago, and another hour perhaps at GDC 2005. The book that she and Aaron have written is essentially a cultural history of videogames, a glimpse at the passions, politics, and personalities of the gaming world. I’m in it, and so are Rich Vogel, John Romero and John Carmack, CliffyB aka Cliff Bleszinzki, Seamus Blackley, Mike Zyda, Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto. Rather than trying to capture everything about the gaming world, this book is written more as a series of looks into individual people and projects, and each is chosen as a frame for the issues that the writers want to talk about.

And what do they want to talk about? The ways in which art and commerce live in tension. The quasi-rock-star celebrity that games can attract, and then the ways in which that can damage people. The curious sort of intellect it often takes to succeed in working in games, and the outlandish characters who result. The authors play up the alienness of many of the developers, the perhaps Aspergian distance, the obsession with models and minutiae, as if to make the point that these are not the people you usually deal with. Heather told me when interviewing me that part of what she discovered during the writing of the book was that she wanted to know “why so many of the brightest people I’ve ever met are making games.”

From inside, of course, it doesn’t always feel that way (though I do know several people, people you wouldn’t expect, who say they simply cannot communicate with Will Wright because he’s too out there). This outside perspective is valuable, especially as the industry continues to evolve rapidly in a swirl of big cash and small ambitions.

Much of the story depicted here is of art and idealism and perhaps most importantly, love of play, finding itself caught up and co-opted in goals that wander a bit afield–training soldiers, fighting for corporate ownership of the boardroom. A bit of an agenda creeps in in the authors’ tone–there’s a clear sense that they too, are horrified along with the graphic artist who asks if the makers of America’s Army are insane, that they are more on Seamus Blackley’s side when he argues for creativity than J Allard’s when he gives away HD TVs and proclaims the day of the microtransaction in the struggle for the soul of the Xbox and the living room entertainment experience. And there’s something downright elegiac in their treatment of Nintendo.

The book has some minor inaccuracies — I’ve never lived in the Philippines, and I never got beat up in school, and I don’t think my smile is supercilious (you tell me!) — but as a look into the realities of why many of us in the industry do what we do, and as a primer on where the heart of he industry has been and where it is going, it’s invaluable. Definitely give it a look.

BTW, there’s something really eerie about reading about yourself as a character.

They’re doing reading events across the country; I was supposed to be at the San Diego one but cannot make it since I will be in Korea. John Donham is there instead. Let me know how it goes.