Index
Contents
Introduction: Nobody Asked for a Toaster Critic vii
1 > The Squalid Grace of Flappy Bird 1
2 > A Portrait of the Artist as a Game Studio 10
3 > The Blue Shell Is Everything That’s Wrong
with America 22
4 > Little Black Sambo, Fm Going to Eat You Up! 28
5 > CanaGobblerHaveltAll? 34
6 > Racketeer Sports 44
7 > The Haute Couture of Videogames 56
8 > Can the Other Come Out and Play? 63
9 > A Way of Looking 71
10 > Free Speech Is Not a Marketing Plan 78
11 > Shaking the Holocaust Train 89
12 > The LongShot 96
13 > Puzzling the Sublime 103
14 > Work Is the Best Place to Goof Off 111
15 > A Trio of Artisanal Reviews 117
16 > What Is a Sports Videogame? 129
17 > The Agony of Mastery 142
18 > The Abyss between the Human and the Alpine 150
19 > Word Games Last Forever 172
20 > Perpetual Adolescence 181
Conclusion: Anything but Games 181
Notes 189