Gamertell

Title: Game Boys (aka Game Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time)
Author: Michael Kane
Price: $24.95 (hardcover)
Release Date: June 23, 2008
Publisher: Viking (part of Penguin Putnam, Inc.)
Pros: Conveys the excitement, personality and seriousness of competitive gaming in a readable tone. A good book for gamers and pro gaming skeptics.
Cons: Starts a bit slow and has some overly simplified explanations of gaming and gaming terms.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up; 90/100; A-; * * * * out of five.

Do not let the title of this book either misguide your or piss you of. First, it is not about Nintendo’s GameBoy handheld game system. Second, it’s not even about boys, it’s about professional gamers. And yes, the author knows that not all gamers are guys.

Plugged In

Game Boys is a non-fictional look at professional gaming focusing primarily on two Counterstrike teams: Top-ranked, super sponsored Team 3D and the well-ranked, independently run Team CompLexity.

It takes a documentary style, chronological look at the teams, its players and coaches as they go from well-organized clans competing for various tournament purses, sponsorships and reputations to becoming members of DirecTV’s Championship Gaming Series.

The earliest portions of the book are written for non-gamers, so a lot of the language and explanations are so basic it’s almost insulting. Granted, the author is trying to make the book more readable for non-gamers, so it’s at least forgivable even if a bit cringe-worthy.

There are plenty of interviews with clan members and coaches as well as insights into the professional gaming circuit. Several sections also help to set the atmosphere and habits of many of the gamers, including the propensity for smoking a certain leafy substance while also downing ADHD medication.

Gamers Do Tell

Much like The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, there cannot be a good story without conflict even if somewhat over dramatized to help keep things interesting and move the book along.

Here, the night-and-day difference between the two teams and the two coaches makes up the book’s binding conflict. A large portion of the book is spent contrasting the seemingly sneaky and super smooth ways of 3D’s coach, Ted Levine, against a more user-friendly and heartfelt Jason Lake, CompLexity’s coach and pocketbook. Levine seems to always score the best sponsors while Lake must sell mousepads to help offset his personally funding the team’s plane tickets.

A few chapters into the book and Kane really finds his pace, having set a scene he’s obviously not familiar with in the earliest chapters. Early on he even admits the turnabout of his misconceptions that gamers are all tubby guys and there’s not much money to be made by being especially skilled at the art of the pixelated kill.

Kane recounts actual competitions, giving them a surprising amount of interest for such a highly visual competition in printed word form. And, since these are competitive teams, there is plenty of backstabbing, sneaky recruiting and personal drama to portray.

By the end, you can certainly tell Kane is a professional gaming convert and likely tuning into the competitions now bing televised on DirecTV (and recast on G4). That, of course, made for rather nice timing for the book’s release.

The Original Wireless Portable Media

Kane’s Game Boys is so much better than the pop-catchy name implies. It is instead a well-formed and serious look into select groups of pro gamers. It’s surprisingly easy to read, becoming more conversational and picking up pace, even while becoming more intimate with the sources, as it progresses.

If all you expect to get from reading this book is - as most mainstream media reviews convey - that it’s possible to earn $40K a year as a gamer, you have been serious misguided. These videogames are a highly personal, emotional and serious business, m’friend.

Site [Game Boys] Read [New York Observer] Site [Championship Gaming Series]