Fiction Meets Geek History With YOU
It’s not often that I find myself personally relating to a novel’s primary character, but Austin…
“All of us geek dads who grew up watching computer games grow and mature… well, this is one of our stories.”
Austin Grossman has been all over the ‘net this past week to celebrate the publication of YOU, his new novel of mystery, videogames, and the people who create them.
Check out Austin’s photo essay “Seven Myths about Videogames and the Seven Games that Prove them Wrong” on Huffington Post for Austin’s picks on some of the most influential video game narratives of the past twenty years. Austin also has an interview up with Kotaku’s Evan Narcisse about YOU, his work as a game design consultant, and more.
For a sneak peek at the world of YOU, there’s Austin’s essay up on Kotaku re: the classic games that inspired the canon (fictional!) mid-90′s game studio Black Arts. More at Black Art’s (quite real!) website.
Austin joined the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, presented by Wired.com, to discuss YOU, his first novel SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE, Dr. Horrible envy, Looking Glass Studios, and more. Finally, there’s Austin’s Polygon essay on learning to write through his career as a game designer.
Still craving more? Did you get a chance to read the Boston Globe review, the Harper’s magazine review by Tom Bissell, the raves by i09 and Boing Boing, not to mention bloggers including Bookgasm and The Review Broads? Or go pick up YOU from your favorite bookstore or e-tailer! Stay tuned–we’ll be back with an excerpt of YOU for Mulholland readers next week.
Everyone had their intense game faces on last night at Austin Grossman’s launch party for You. Thank you to all who joined us at Barcade!
The Great Gatsby for NES reminds me of a passage about video games from Austin Grossman’s novel, You:
There’s no pre-set story. There’s just a clockwork world full of objects and places and people and rules for how they interact, and you can do what you want with them. There’s a story, but you have to choose what it is and make it yourself, but the world is full of tools for doing that.
There’s something immensely appealing about taking one of the world’s greatest stories and handing the reins over to you. The narrative push-and-pull that lies at the heart of every good video game is expertly explored by Austin Grossman—and he should know, having written a fair number of games. Pick up You when it goes on sale next week, and join us at You’s launch party.
Brush up on your Galaga skills, because when we celebrate the publication of Austin Grossman’s novel, You, next week at Brooklyn’s Barcade, Austin will be giving free copies of the book to anyone who can beat him at an arcade game of his choosing. Click here for the event details.
I’m reading The New York Times’s review of the MOMA’s Applied Design exhibit, which includes several early, iconic video games. What the Times says about video games puts me in the mind of Austin Grossman’s You:
The defining feature of video games is interaction, the three-way conversation among designer, machine and player.
In a way, this definition of video games aptly describes Grossman’s novel, which explores the relationships among a band of video game designers through a mysterious and malicious glitch in one of their games’s software.
Remove interactivity, [and] you no longer have a video game.
If there were just the video games, or just the computers in the Black Arts Games offices, or just four friends who are drifting apart with age, there wouldn’t be a story. It’s the way Grossman has these elements interact—often via clever immersion into Black Arts’s games—that allow the narrative to unspool before you.
We loved the world of You, and we want to get this book into your hands as soon as possible. If you preorder the book right this second, we’ll mail you a signed bookplate to paste into your hardcover. If you preorder the eBook, well, you can paste the bookplate onto your eReader. It certainly looks good enough. Click here for details.
