Review - "Art of the Video Game"

The book begins with a nice ten-page overview of videogame history throughout the last several decades, then quickly dives into twenty-six chapters, each about a particular videogame released in the last few years.

The images are amazing and the print quality good. The text, while sparse, adds meaningful insight to the art and to how the gaming experience is developed and delivered. Exclusive interviews provide insight into the development process and the artists' intent to imbibe emotion into their creations.

The games covered are: Ace Combat 6, Age of Conan, Battlestations: Midway, Beautiful Katamari, Blacksite: Area 51, Call of Duty 4, FIFA '08, Half-Life 2, Hellboy, Hellgate: London, Kane & Lynch: Dead Men, Killzone 2, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: Anniversary, Medieval 2: Total War, Mortal Kombat: Deception, NBA Live '08, Rampage: Total Destruction, Reservoir Dogs, Ridge Racer 7, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog: Next Generation, Stranglehold, Team Fortress 2, Universe at War: Earth Assault, Viking: Battle for Asgard, and Warmonger: Operation Downtown Destruction.

Joyful small bites fill the book. Did you know that Tomb Raider was originally imagined as a clone of Indiana Jones and that its lead character was reconceived as a woman due to copyright infringement concerns? Or that Laura Croft, who began life as a spicy South American native named Laura Cruz, became an English noble-woman in an attempt to make the game more commercially viable? Or that internal struggle led to a marketing of Lara's sexuality and her ridiculous proportions in Tomb Raider II, and then to her subsequent downsizing towards a more authentic female form in the following two game releases?

One doesn't have to be familiar with the games included to appreciate them. Even if you haven't played videogames since the days of Pong, Missile Command, or Castle Wolfenstein, you will enjoy reading about the creation of the art of each game while viewing the eye candy.

As computer processing power expands exponentially, artists are increasingly free to create the images they visualize. Each year their digital work becomes more and more engaging. Josh Jenisch's work is a great treatise on the current commercially distributed state of the art, and I hope in another five or ten years Josh or someone else takes a stab at honoring the art again.

The book is worthy to earn a space on the bookshelf of anyone interested in videogames or art in general. Buy it as a gift for yourself or for others.

The Art Of The Video Game - by Josh Jenisch - Published by Quirk Books - 192 Pages - List Price: $40.

Check your local bookstore or order it today from Amazon.com

The International Arcade Museum (http://www.arcade-museum.com/ ) is the world's largest museum of the art, inventions, and history of the amusement and coin-operated machine industries. It operates several web sites, including the popular "Killer List of Videogames," an extensive online encyclopedia of coin-operated videogames (http://www.klov.com/ ) and the "Video Arcade Preservation Society," a census of coin-operated videogame collectors (http://www.vaps.org/).

Greg McLemore, December 3, 2008

The Art Of The Video Game is on The International Arcade Museum's Top 10 Non-Game Gifts For Gamers 2008 list!