A review by forjay
Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell

Tom Bissell treats videogames as a serious form of art. He has a literary background, and this book is his attempt to subject modern videogames to the same level of analysis as film, literature, and music. Most of the book works really well, as an erudite outsider's critique of the state of the game industry, but I wish Bissell had taken the time to learn a little bit more about how games are made and how they work. No one would take a film critic seriously if he didn't know the first thing about how films are made, and yet Bissell states outright that he doesn't understand how the games he's critiquing actually work. Despite that one criticism, this book is a good step in the direction of taking videogames seriously as a form of art.