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Joystiq Review: SMARTBOMB: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution

Christopher Grant
Updated ·4 min read


SMARTBOMB: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution is the product of five years of insider research by Heather Chaplin, a career journalist who has written for publications like the New York Times and Salon, and her husband Aaron Ruby, a gamer who has written about video games extensively, including reviews for Entertainment Weekly. Although some of the stories in the book will be old news for hardcore gamers, by using intimate and individual portraits of many of the biggest names in video games, they've managed to tell a story that not only doesn't feel old, but is genuinely insightful.

Check out our interview with Heather and Aaron as well.



Waiting for the bomb to drop
SMARTBOMB is not just about video games, but about the people who design, build, and play them. It's a hyperkinetic, multifaceted approach that allows husband and wife co-authors Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby to imbue their portrayal with some of the spark and speed that characterize the industry.

The character profiles illuminate the names and faces we already know, and turn them into people we've already met. Before CliffyB was "transformed into a pimp-suit wearing game designer, [he] was an acne-riddled, miserable-at-school, small-town kid filled with unbridled fury at his low status in life...." On the surface, CliffyB is the perennial "attention whore," making a point of being seen at all of the convention parties, only to slip out the back door at the earliest possible convenience. He's not a rock star, he just plays one on TV. CliffyB opens the book as as the perfect metaphor for the video game industry: a nerd in a pimp suit. "And so the videogame industry moves forward."

But first it goes backward, covering the origins in a game of historical connect the dots, beginning in Brookhaven National Laboratory, where physicist Willy Higinbotham created Tennis for Two

using an oscilloscope in 1958. Then over to MIT, where Steve Russell and his friends at the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) invented hacker culture in the same building Higinbotham had previously worked in, a building "erected to house developing military technologies." By 1962 Russell had created the ultimate hack: Spacewar on the PDP-1, which in turn was seen by Atari founder Nolan Bushnell. Bushnell started with a knockoff of Spacewar that flopped, and followed up with a knockoff of Tennis for Two which... well, you know.

Though the histories may be old news for many gamers, they are integral to the larger story. The chapter on id Software and the culture of first-person shooters may only scrape the surface where Masters of Doom plumbed the depths; the chapter on Microsoft's entrance into the mega-industry of video games is similarly overpowered by Dean Takahashi's thorough look at the same subject, Opening the Xbox. But comparing each portrait to a longer book doesn't account for the design of Smartbomb: internal juxtaposition.

While the portrait of CliffyB stands alone, it is far more interesting contrasted with that of the older, more respected Will Wright. Unlike CliffyB, Wright is the brilliant nerd who doesn't know, or doesn't care, about how he looks and acts, wearing the same "metal-framed, aviator-shaped glasses" he wore as a kid and designing thinking kitchen appliances with his free time. He's the kind of guy who bluntly asides, "You know, origin of life, nature of intelligence, that's basically what I'm into...." For fun, he plans on participating in a Department of Defense sponsored competition to design an autonomous vehicle that can transport itself to Las Vegas.

The book takes its title from the bombs used in the classic arcade title, Defender. The term was later appropriated by the military, marking yet another in a long series of intersections in the symbiotic relationship between the entertainment and military technology worlds. The titular chapter, "Smartbomb," details many of these overlaps, such as the Army's recruitment video game America's Army and their training video game, Full Spectrum Warrior.

SMARTBOMB

is not, and never tries to be, a comprehensive history. Much of the stories will be retreads for lifelong gamers, but their focus is not singular, it's collective. In the five short years since they began their project, Chaplin and Ruby have witnessed an industry that continues to shift and evolve, like a character in Will Wright's Spore. The book ends with the launch of the Xbox, introducing the world's largest software company into the cutthroat world of video game consoles. Four years later and we're on the doorstep of the next generation of game consoles, and the Xbox no less.

SMARTBOMB is not concerned with duplicating the efforts of other video game books. Chaplin and Ruby sought to capture the scope and speed of the "video game revolution" with the future clearly in their sights. "And so the videogame industry moves forward."


If you're interested, check out four chapters from the book which have been serialized over at Next Generation:Smartbomb Intro, Virtual Worlds and Alternate Lives, Games Given Fighting Chance, and How Xbox Happened.