Smartbomb, Continued

The fourth chapter - "Dallas: First-Person-Shooter Capital" - deals with those more mature games, and is where "Smartbomb" truly hits its stride. This is the era when gaming was thrust into excitable overdrive, courtesy of Doom. The authors present a riveting history of that popular game and the first-person-shooter movement as a whole, which would eventually spawn everything from the Cyberathlete Professional League to the medical term DIMS: Doom-Induced Motion Sickness.

Just as exciting as the actual play of games like Doom and Quake is the back-story of their co-creators, John Carmack and John Romero. While the two men and their company, id Software, experienced a meteoric rise, the unraveling of both the company and their relationship is gripping stuff to read about. When we discover that workaholic programmer Carmack, for example, wrote a hack program to monitor marketing guru Romero, should we be at all surprised? They are, after all, computer wizards.

As for the skeptics of the concept of video games as a competitive sport, they need look no further than the scenes of the 2002 CPL Championship match between SK and GoL. While some may scoff at Angel Munoz's dreams for a "cyber-stadium" of competitive FPS battles, "Smartbomb" makes it clear that such events are big business. We may in fact not be far off from the day when the theoretical "ESPN Gaming Station" broadcasts razor-sharp combat melees between trash-talking teenagers from all over the world, from CPL stadiums packed with tens of thousands of over-caffeinated fans. After all, if we watch bowling, poker and figure skating, why not Doom?

The next chapter, entitled "Will Wright and the Model of Everything", offers the perfect change of pace to the adrenaline-fueled FPS culture of the previous segment. Wright is arguably the most compelling figure profiled in the book, a man seemingly devoid of people skills, who nonetheless succeeds in creating entire digital worlds and complex social interaction models with his best-selling Sims series. This segment of "Smartbomb" shows the other side of phenomenon, with games that aren't won or lost but simply played; it describes the appeal of players who assume the role of God and build their own worlds.

By the time "Smartbomb" reaches its later chapters on virtual worlds, role-playing, and serious games, any reader should be convinced that what Chaplin and Ruby are detailing is more than just a high-growth business or even a new form of entertainment; it's a seismic shift in our culture. Along the way, readers are treated with odd vignettes that resemble the stuff of a Don DeLillo novel. When describing how Will Wright and his partners created SimsCity's parent company Maxis, Chaplin and Ruby write, "The llama became the company's mascot, narrowly beating out the Boston tree fern and the beef tapeworm."

But perhaps the biggest triumph for "Smartbomb" is the way the book illuminates the passion and dedication of both gaming youths and adults, which ultimately is what separates video games from other forms of popular entertainment. In film and music today, there are only a handful of artists and contributions that elicit a truly diehard following from the masses. Thousands of Star Wars fans camped out in tents waiting to be first in line for the prequels, for example, but there are dozens of games, if not more, that feature the same sort of fanatic frenzy. Chaplin and Ruby capture this phenomenon and hold it tight under their microscope, which makes "Smartbomb" a worthy tome indeed.

Grade: B+