Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

What’s the cheat code to get a sequel?

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier

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I’ve been playing video games as long as I can remember. When I was a child I would walk to the laundry mat/videorama to rent new games. I was lucky to own a couple of titles, but if it wasn’t a birthday or Christmas, I had to use my allowance to rent. The game boxes filled two cases, facing forwards from floor to ceiling. There must have been 50 titles to choose from each promising a new magical adventure. I don’t think I ever gave […]

An insider’s look at video game development

Significant Zero: Heroes, Villains, and the Fight for Art and Soul in Video Games by Walt Williams

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This is a timely book about video game development. It’s also a meditation on the relationship of art, commerce, and morality in gaming.  The writer, Walt Williams, is a veteran of the video game industry. He has been involved with several major franchises and games, such as Bioshock, Spec Ops: The Line, and Star Wars Battlefront. The acclaim and popularity of those titles gives Williams’ book a certain amount of credibility and weight, although he is quick to disclaim that he is “not a hero […]

A love letter to video games

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Ready Player One by Ernest Cline was a more recent CBR9 book exchange gift. The backlash for the book was pretty intense, but with the recent film adaptation, I was curious to read it for myself. Thus, I was glad my Mocha Girls Read book club picked it for our white male author theme. I ended up finishing it over 4th of July and surprisingly enjoyed the pop culture filled story. The story follows Wade on an epic quest to essentially save the internet from a […]

Grumpy Sexy Polish Fantasy

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Let’s all go into this review with our eyes wide open. I don’t know very much about fantasy beyond Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. That’s the total extent of my knowledge of the genre, unless you count playing Dungeons and Dragons. So, take this review with a grain of salt. My review is that this book series, which spawned great video games and a Netflix show with Henry Cavill in a white beard, is awesome.  Geralt, aka The Witcher, wanders around what […]

What is your narrative?

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Boss Fight Book’s Baldur’s Gate II, is an analysis of the classic RPG game by writer Matt Bell. It is part of a series of non-fiction books dedicated to the analysis of video games artifacts by creators, developers writers and players. The series is kind of a mixed bag. The concept is great, a series of book which try to analyze video games and the creation of games from different point of view, and it just tickles my game developer/academic sensibility. unfortunately it always feels […]

Figured I’d better read this now in case Hollywood screws it up

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Yeah, I’m late to the party on this one. Actually, I’m usually late to the party–one of these days I’m gonna show up before the party starts and pass out from tequila before you all even walk through the door and you’re gonna be shocked. (Just kidding, I hate tequila.) Anyway, I’ve been curious about this book since I first started hearing about it on CBR, and now with the imminent release of the major motion picture, I decided I’d better jump on it in […]



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