Death by Video Game

Tales of Obsession from the Virtual Frontline

By: Simon Parkin

Narrated by: Toby Longworth

Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins

Publisher's summary

In Canada, volunteers are raising money for charity by playing marathon stints of Penn & Teller's Desert Bus, probably the worst video game ever created.

Across the globe, thousands of viewers tune in to Kurt J. Mac's epic but seemingly pointless voyage towards the outer realms of Minecraft's procedurally-generated world.

In Iraq, mothers encourage their children to enter Call of Duty competitions to keep them off the bomb-ravaged streets of Baghdad.

And in Taiwan, a spate of deaths at gaming cafés is raising questions about what playing video games does to us.

In Death by Video Game, renowned gaming journalist Simon Parkin delves into the lives of obsessive gamers to answer the question: why do we spend so many hours of our lives in virtual playgrounds?

Telling the stories of gamers and the developers who create the worlds they obsessively inhabit, Death by Video Game is a window on the human stories that have made video games the twenty-first century's most vibrant cultural medium.

©2015 Simon Parkin (P)2015 Audible, Ltd

Critic reviews

"The finest book on video games yet. Simon Parkin thinks like a critic, conjures like a novelist, and writes like an artist at the height of his powers - which, in fact, he is." (Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives and God Lives in St. Petersburg)

"One of the most effortless and masterly voices in video game writing." (New Statesman)

Excellent content and narration - annoying audio

some of the best analysis of video game player behaviour I've ever read. Excellent narration, but the first few hours the audio needed to be more compressed - some speech was too loud and other things too quiet to be heard clearly. Not much of a detriment though - definitely recommended.

Interesante

Es algo denso. Arranca flojo pero a partir del capítulo 2 empieza a mejorar. Al final resulta que he aprendido muchas cosas nuevas sobre una industria que conozco menos de lo que pensaba. La narración en buena pero la calidad de audio necesita mejorar.

Not really about what the title suggests

If you want to learn more about death by games then only the first chapter and the last couple of paragraphs cover this. There is no analysis of why it happens it what is being done to prevent it.
The rest of the book is back story of games, their motivations and the people who play then for escapism.
The book contains numerous omissions and inaccuracies which is to be expected by a gunshot from Euroganer. For example, when discussing the GTA Hot Coffee mod the book describes it as graphical seeds scene when in fact it was crude and fully clothed dry humping.
Gamer Gate is referenced and Zoe Quinn spoken of but no mention of her relationship with a Kotaku journalist who prompted her title without disclosing the relationship which sparked the Gamer Gate movement about ethical journalism.
The narrator was easy to listen to but some of the accents needed work when recounting events from peoples perspectives, some almost bordered on offensive.