Book Review - Peterson: Playing at the World (2012).

[jiituomas]

Here's a copy of my Amazon review of Jon Peterson's book Playing at the World. A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-playing Games (San Diego: Unreason Press

Comments

[anonymous]

Playing at the World is a history book, not a book about conceptual theories of play. It only builds the barest framework of terminology for the "moving pieces" of games to show how ideas were transmitted between games over time. Of what research relevant to that history is the author "almost totally ignorant," and what claims of the book are falsified by that research?

[jiituomas]

My issue is that a lot of serious academic work has been written on elements such as the effect of role-playing game rules on the game experience, on game narratives in tabletop play, on immersion into character, on historical re-enactment and on the history of how D&D has affected games that came after it. Peterson repeatedly makes off-handed remarks towards those points, almost never substantiating said claims, and presenting the impression as if he were treading on new ground. This makes many of his extended claims, quite frankly, pedestrian

[ext_1429971]

I'm glad that you found parts of the book useful, but your very strong condemnation of other parts obviously requires a response

[jiituomas]

Jon, thank you very much for taking the time to respond and elaborate your points. Given that an outsider cannot see from the book beyond that it was written "over a period of five years", and published in 2012, it's quite easy to note that relevant-seeming works have come out during that time, ones that would have been found with a simple Google search, the situation creates an image of you having been either ignorant or prejudiced