Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell

For When: You're on a killing spree


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Published: Jun 16, 2010

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For better or worse, Roger Ebert's spent much of the past half decade proving that smart critics should stick to what they know. In 2005, he opined that video games aren't art — and never will be. It's a claim he's been rehashing ever since: Sweeping condemnations are seldom qualified, the intelligence of the reader is frequently insulted and the points he purports to make never materialize. The result looks like old-fogey bitterness at best, comment-baiting blog fodder at worst.

Tom Bissell, for his part, knows video games. Though he wisely wastes few words on the skeptics themselves, his own take is clear: Throughout Extra Lives, he refers to "the classics of the form," places the video game on the same shelf as sculpture or poetry, and makes convincing arguments for it being "the most dominant popular art form of our time." You could find these sentiments on any web forum frequented by teenagers, but to hear it from a Guggenheim Fellow is a pleasure both to read and to ponder.

Thankfully, Bissell is no fanboy, and he spends more time exploring his frustrations with video games than his fascination with them. To wit, his vivid descriptions of artful zombie dismemberment in Resident Evil can be enjoyed by anyone, but what will interest the gamer is the way he posits that Evil's narrative shortcomings set a troubling precedent.

On the one hand, Extra Lives is a fun primer for anyone remotely interested in why video games are so popular. On the other, it's just the kind of smart criticism the art form has always needed.

Pantheon, 240 pp., $22.95, June 8