If you want an engaging, enjoyable tour of the video game commentary in 2015 conducted by a smart and entertaining writer, you'd be hard-pressed to do much better than How to Talk about Videogames by Ian Bogost. -Boston Globe Whether Bogost is examining old favorites like Ms. Pac-Man or scrutinizing a flash-in-the-pan app like Flappy Bird, his outlook is thoughtful, inquisitive, and amused. -Game On Bogost embraces the preposterousness and paradox of games as both consumer products and art, and in running with that tension he offers a compelling method of understanding and writing about them. -Gamechurch.com [How to Talk about Videogames] has already proven indispensable to those of us interested in how video games have become such a vital artistic medium. -Electronic Literature Ian Bogost's How to Talk About Videogames isn't just a book about games-it's a book about criticism, and where it fits in our wider culture. Bogost is the rare academic writer whose work is as clear and exciting as the best of the mainstream, and whose critical exercises backfire by becoming enormous commercial/popular successes. -Boing Boing This is Ian Bogost at his best. Keen intelligence, acid wit, and a restless desire to look beyond the surface and tease out games' less obvious, more important meanings. -Frank Lantz, director, NYU Game Center No one else is as wide-ranging, funny, or inspiringly immune to cant or groupthink as Ian Bogost. How to Talk about Videogames is his most accessible and entertaining book yet. -Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives and Apostle
Ian Bogost can take apart a game's design and tell you exactly what makes it work and what it means to us personally and to our game-playing society. How to Talk about Videogames has deep insights into a range of current topics we are dealing with or experiencing today. There's a lot here to learn. -John Romero, veteran game creator