Name: Lost in a Good Game
ISBN: 9781785786143

Pete Etchells

An exploration of the psychological effects - the pleasures, benefits and disbenefits - of computer games, and a touching memoir of a dedicated gamer.

Why We Play Video Games and What They Can Do for Us

Lost in a Good Game

Why We Play Video Games and what They Can Do for Us

Nelson Zagalo

I really wish I had loved this book., but it was not possible, for two reasons:

1. In the academic domain, while agreeing that in science everything is provisional and nothing absolute exists I cannot agree with an approach that throws everything behind human complexity and bias.

Yes, the world is much more complex than we would like it to be. The variables are far greater in number than we can control, or even get to know. But using that as a subterfuge to sit back and watch life go by makes no sense. There are plenty of problems with video game studies, but that's no reason to pull up the rug and throw everything under there. On the other hand, using the idea that everything we want to study in the human will be contaminated by the bias of those who study along with the bias of those who are analysed, while a reality, cannot be used to not do anything either. There are many ways to deal with bias, and in psychology, this ends up being the work par excellence of researchers.

2. Being no worse than discrediting science, trying to write a book that is simultaneously a memoir, a novel and a scientific essay is not a task within everyone's reach. 

It would be difficult enough to write in one of these registers and make a good book. To be able to jump between the various registers, connecting everything and keeping the reader focused is something that does not happen here. You can't be talking about your father's illness, and then talk about the irrelevance of player profiles, and then move on to anecdotes about historical technologies.

Ricardo Sousa

This book showcases important results from academic research on the impact of videogames across a multitude of topics (eg, violence, addiction, immersion, wayfinding,...) and, while doing so, also offers a deeply personal account of what specific games did for the author in various stages of his life.

A word of praise to the author’s relentless focus on facts and scientific research, to counterweight news headlines and biased opinions, while taking us on this journey.

Christopher Wheeler

'Etchells writes eloquently ... A heartfelt defence of a demonised pastime' The Times 'Once in an age, a piece of culture comes along that feels like it was specifically created for you, the beats and words and ideas are there because it is your life the creator is describing. Lost In A Good Game is exactly that. It will touch your heart and mind. And even if Bowser, Chun-li or Q-Bert weren't crucial parts of your youth, this is a flawless victory for everyone' Adam Rutherford When Pete Etchells was 14, his father died from motor neurone disease. In order to cope, he immersed himself in a virtual world - first as an escape, but later to try to understand what had happened. Etchells is now a researcher into the psychological effects of video games, and was co-author on a recent paper explaining why WHO plans to classify ‘game addiction’ as a danger to public health are based on bad science and (he thinks) are a bad idea. In this, his first book, he journeys through the history and development of video games - from Turing’s chess machine to mass multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft- via scientific study, to investigate the highs and lows of playing and get to the bottom of our relationship with games - why we do it, and what they really mean to us. At the same time, Lost in a Good Game is a very unusual memoir of a writer coming to terms with his grief via virtual worlds, as he tries to work out what area of popular culture we should classify games (a relatively new technology) under.

Lost in a Good Game Why We Play Video Games and What They Can Do for Us

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