Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution By Heather Chaplin & Aaron Ruby Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, N.C. 2005, 288 pp., US $25 ISBN 1565123468

As IEEE Spectrum readers know, video games have become big news in terms of their technical and economic impact. Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby explore their cultural impact in Smartbomb.

The authors report vividly from design studios, industry conferences, tournaments, and even bedrooms to give a panoramic view of the gaming world, from the developers who create the games to the players who can spend months trying to master the latest titles. Many notable game designers are featured, including Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario, one of the most famous and successful game characters ever; John Carmack, cocreator of the seminal Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake franchises [see "The Wizardry of Id," Spectrum, August 2002]; and Will Wright, creator of the idiosyncratic blockbusters SimCity and The Sims [see "Mind Games," Spectrum, December 2002]. Getting insight into what drives such designers creatively is thought provoking. For many of them, video games are an expression of larger artistic or philosophical goals.

However, Smartbomb does miss a significant part of the video game landscape entirely: that belonging to the so-called casual gamer. Chaplin and Ruby have focused laserlike on hard-core gamers, who spend countless hours honing their reflexes to play in networked first-person shooters such as Halo 2 and Counter Strike and those who spend equally countless hours accumulating treasures and reputations in massive multiplayer online role-playing games such as Ultima and EverQuest [see "Engineering EverQuest," Spectrum, July 2005]. Although hard-core gaming is the highest-profile segment of the video game world and pushes technological and cultural boundaries, the hardest, casual games—such as electronic versions of card and puzzle games that can be easily picked up and put down—are actually responsible for more than half of all online game play. Casual games for cellphones—which possess graphics capabilities far inferior to those of the consoles and personal computers used by hard-core gamers but which are ideally placed to capture a player's attention during an idle moment—are also becoming increasingly significant. But unfortunately, you wouldn't know any of this from Smartbomb.

The book also lacks analysis. For example, the authors helpfully translate some examples of the slang used by many online gamers, without even pausing to comment on its racist, homophobic, and misogynist nature. If the gaming industry wants to be treated as a legitimate and mainstream form of art and entertainment, it—and its would-be chroniclers—have to stop turning a blind eye to such cultural problems.

Still, if you're looking for a book to bring yourself up to speed with a who's who and what's what of video games, Smartbomb is the read for you. And readers who are familiar with the video game landscape are likely to find the book's portraits of the industry's movers and shakers—as well as the lowly players who ultimately pay their salaries—worthwhile.

—Stephen Cass