Author: VGC | John

Trevor Strunk is the host of the No Cartridge podcast, though you might also know him as @Hegelbon on Twitter. As of today, he is also the author of Story Mode: Video Games and the Interplay Between Consoles and Culture, which was recently published by Prometheus Books.

Story Mode looks to examine how several popular game franchises (such as Call of Duty) have changed over the years, as well as how those games have begun to rewrite our culture in their own way:

In Story Mode, video games critic and host of the No Cartridge podcast Trevor Strunk traces how some of the most popular and influential game series have changed over years and even decades of their continued existence and growth. We see how the Call of Duty games—once historical simulators that valorized conflicts like World War II—went “modern,” complete with endless conflicts, false flag murders of civilians, and hyperadvanced technology. It can be said that Fortnite’s runaway popularity hinges on a competition for finite resources in an era of horrific inequality. Strunk reveals how these shifts occurred as direct reflections of the culture in which games were produced, thus offering us a uniquely clear window into society’s evolving morals on a mass scale.

Story Mode asks the question, Why do video games have a uniquely powerful ability to impact culture? Strunk argues that the participatory nature of games themselves not only provides players with a sense of ownership of the narratives within, but also allows for the consumption of games to be a revelatory experience as the meaning of a game is oftentimes derived by the manner in which they are played.

An excerpt from Story Mode detailing the rise of id Software’s Doom and how it eventually gave way to “acceptable” violence in games (“How To Get Away With Making An Ultraviolent Video Game”) can be found at Defector.

Are you looking to delve deeper into game history and the study of game culture? Then look no further than the Big List of Books About Games.

Obviously, the Big List of Books About Games is not a list of every book ever published about video games. But it’s certainly a good place to start… and there is a lot of options about exactly where you could begin.

History buffs would do well to begin with Steven Kent’s The Ultimate History of Video Games, a book that provides a pretty good overview of everything from Pong through the beginnings of the PS2/GameCube/Xbox era. David Sheff’s Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children fills in a lot of the gaps with a very detailed account of Nintendo’s rise from the early 1980s up through the dawn of the Nintendo 64. And Tristan Donovan’s Replay: The History of Video Games travels across the pond to cover the same timeframe with an additional focus on the game development industry in Europe.

If you want to go way back, David Sudnow’s Pilgrim in the Microworld is a wild game-specific study about how one non-player got sucked into an obsession with video games. Out of print for decades, the book was republished by Boss Fight Books in 2020.

Closer to now, Jason Schreier’s Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made and the anthology The State of Play: Creators and Critics on Video Game Culture will give you a painfully accurate picture of what game development and game culture are like today.

I would also strongly recommend David Kushner’s Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, especially if you ever wanted to know more about the creation of Doom or the diverging career paths of John Romero and John Carmack.

With hundreds of choices like this, the Big List of Books About Games is currently split into four categories (and like these titles, some will be highlighted as “Recommended” picks):

▶ Commentary, Criticism, and Cultural Studies
▶ History (Before 2000)
▶ History (2000 – Present)
▶ Memoirs

The Big List of Books About Games will be updated on a regular basis, but if there’s a title you know I’m missing, please let me know through the Contact page.