You know the coffee table in TMWRNJ? It's the same as my coffee table here. It's well nice. Maybe it's the same one.

In other making-stuff-available-for-free news, Steven Poole has uploaded a PDF version of his great book on videogames, Trigger Happy:

http://stevenpoole.net/blog/trigger-happier/

His Edge columns are on there too.

>great book on videogames, Trigger Happy:

Thank you very much for this...it looks like a great read.

To anyone else vaguely interested: go download it now, as the free pdf is limited-time-only.

I remember wanting to read that book for aaaaaaaaaages, and being a bit disappointed when I finally did. It's true that games need a few more in-depth analyses of their cultural and social impact, but I'm not sure if that one was it - it was good, but it was somewhat dry, and tough going at times.

What we really need is something like that by Brooker. Or maybe Gillen could give it a go? ;-)

I'm about 80 pages in to that book now (most of which happened at work, where I was very, very bored) and I think I might agree with Seb.

It's good, don't get me wrong. And sometimes it's fun to read about these things just because you're somewhat familiar with them and the book can flesh that out slightly. But it does seem to be just slightly superficial.

Also, the author dismisses "God games" such as SimCity and Civilization on the grounds that they don't really interest him...which surely misses out on a huge area of fascinating study.

Still...that said...it's free, and more than worth a read (so far). Get it now while you can...probably won't change the way you look at video games, but it'll give you a good kick in the pants toward wishing you could know more.

You can't dismiss God games, especially when we're actually living in one.

I did make another post on Friday, but I only got a message that it was going to be checked by a moderator, and it hasn't appeared since then. Essentially I said:

I suppose some of Trigger Happy might seem a bit dated now that we've got more sources of in-depth writing on videogames (The Escapist, for example: Kieron Gillen was mentioned, and he wrote a great article on Super Columbine Massacre RPG for that website). But the first time I read the book, it was the first time I'd read anything really serious or "academic" about games, so it had a big impact on me.

He used his last Edge column to discuss some of the things that had changed since the book was published:
http://stevenpoole.net/trigger-happy/edge-148/

And his other book Unspeak is worth reading too. :-)

The more I read the more I like it. I'm thinking at this point it's probably worth the cost. I'll probably buy it for someone as a gift this season.

LEE AND HERRING, CUNTS.

Yes, I urge anyone to download these puppies. L+H are great as solo stand-ups, but their best work was Fist of Fun Series 2.