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to move forward in technological devel- regional museums. This is a lushly illus- opment. Intervention therefore means trated coffee-table book that offers readers creating and contributing to an existing full-page, color photographs and succinct system in order to challenge assumptions summaries of video games, descriptions and offer new ways of proceeding. We of their significance, and interviews with see how games traverse the spaces where many of their creators. Slick and gorgeous, once they might have been pigeonholed. the book offers an important permanent, Through their nature as play within the widely distributable, inexpensive comple- ludic transversal, they are a pure electrate ment to the exhibition. practice, thus bridging the dichotomy of Given the noise the Smithsonian work/play and becoming an inter/vention. exhibition has stirred up, the bar was high As we move further into the digital for Melissinos and O’Rourke: the authors era, the concept of electracy will gain more needed to prove video games worthy of attention, just as literacy gained attention the moniker “art” and of their standing as in oral culture. Holmevik’s work tells us part of the “record of the American experi- that play—with its impact on digitally ence,” to pull a quote from the museum’s mediated environments of gaming—is publicity. But for those of us who have deeply embedded as an inter/vention in long been making, studying, using, and being electrate. This book will become a advocating for video games, the mere fact reference and a seminal work in under- of the exhibit and its publication counts standing the place of play in electracy. as a success—not so much because the likes of game designers David Crane and —Hannah R. Gerber, Sam Houston State Ron Gilbert now find a place beside art- University, Huntsville, TX ists David Hockney and Mary Cassatt, but because video games do belong in a record of the American experience. Melissinos and O’Rourke deserve praise for having The Art of Video Games: From spearheaded the project. Pac-Man to Mass Effect Beyond that abstract victory, The Art Chris Melissinos and Patrick O’Rourke of Video Games is a bittersweet triumph for New York: Welcome Books, 2012. those with a more nuanced interest in and Contents, images, credits. 215 pp. $40.00 understanding of video game history. The paper. ISBN: 9781599621098 book’s organization of the history of video games into five eras offers an admirable The Art of Video Games, by Chris Melis- summary of the key trends and shifts in sinos and Patrick O’Rourke, published the gaming landscape. Of course, so did in cooperation with the Smithsonian earlier illustrated histories such as Rusel American Art Museum, is a catalog and DeMaria and Johnny L. Wilson’s High companion to a high-profile exhibition Score! The Illustrated History of Video of the same name that opened at the Games (McGraw Hill, 2002), though the Smithsonian facility in Washington, DC, latter never reached beyond the enthusiast in 2012 and is scheduled to travel to many and is now out of print. Book Reviews 129

But while the shiny pages and full- the book’s target audience will learn things color spreads telegraph official approval, they might not otherwise have considered. the content is sometimes incomplete and Few will really read the book as an argu- inaccurate. I will pick as an example some- ment—it is a coffee-table book, after all. In thing I know well, the 1977 Atari Video this respect, the book must be understood Computer System (VCS), also known as as a printed, bound version of the gallery the Atari 2600. The authors get a lot right. notes that accompany the exhibition. An Their coverage of VCS titles such as Pitfall! astute reader, particularly one accustomed and the Atari port of Pac-Man, for exam- to exhibition catalogs, might observe that ple, discusses the important technical and the best such catalogs take advantage of the historical situations that influenced the medium of print to go into greater detail creation of these games. But they are less than might be possible on gallery walls. sure-footed in their discussion of Combat, In that respect, Melissinos and O’Rourke the pack-in title that shipped with the miss an opportunity to explore in deeper Atari VCS in 1977. They correctly identify detail some of the points they can raise only it as a port of the Key Games title Tank, but briefly on the gallery walls. they also draw the conclusion that “devel- Perhaps there lies the problem The opers were just starting to learn how to Art of Video Games really poses: how seri- wring experience from the new platform. ously should we take games as a cultural As such, Combat was a two-player activity form from the perspective of institution- with no computer-controlled competitor alization and historical record? Seriously in the game” (p.15). There’s no denying enough to put them in the Smithsonian that the title is two-player only, but the for a spell, but what does that accomplish- reasons for that are more complicated ment signify? Does it mean that games than this conclusion warrants. In fact, have been recognized as art? Or just video games of the mid-1970s were pri- that—even though the book includes as marily two-player head-to-head affairs, much material from Japan as it does from and the VCS platform was designed to the United States—the games have been facilitate such experiences—and not much recognized as Americana, that they have else. The authors write from a contempo- more in common with the American Art rary view, one in which a video game that Museum’s collections of graphic art, folk requires two players is anomalous. Melis- art, crafts, and decorative art? sinos and O’Rourke probably know this This problem is not addresed in well, but in the couple hundred words they The Art of Video Games. In her foreword, devote to each of the titles the book covers, Smithsonian American Art Museum omissions sometimes lead to misunder- director Elizabeth Broun seems to take standings. That Combat is the first game the whole affair as a kind of curiosity, like discussed in the book makes these limita- something that happened while she was tions particularly noticeable. at lunch. “I owe a huge debt of thanks to While The Art of Video Games shouldn’t Chris Melissinos,” she writes, “for helping be mistaken for a traditional piece of aca- us bridge the gap between the traditions demic scholarship, there is no doubt that of an art museum and the vast world of 130 AMERICAN JO U RNAL OF PLAY s FALL 2012

gaming” (p. 7). But this gap has been in to its association with the Smithsonian, the process of being closed by creators and then it leaves the serious reader with a curators for more than two decades, from challenge. Once the ceremony and blus- artists like Cory Arcangel and Mary Flana- ter wears off, once video games have been gan to curators like the Whitney Museum dubbed art by a hallowed cultural and his- of American Art’s Christiane Paul and the torical institution, shouldn’t we have big- American Museum of the Moving Image’s ger, more interesting aspirations for them? Carl Goodman to institutions like The Strong through its International Center —Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games LLC, for the History of Electronic Games. If the Atlanta, GA book’s primary accomplishment amounts