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Published April 25, 2013
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About the author
Austin Grossman
23 books543 followersAustin Grossman graduated from Harvard University in 1991 with a plan to write the great American novel; instead he became a video game designer at Looking Glass Studios.
He has since contributed as a writer and designer to a number of critically acclaimed video games, such as ULTIMA UNDERWORLD II, SYSTEM SHOCK, DEUS EX, and TOMB RAIDER: LEGEND, and has taught and lectured on narrative in video games. He is currently a freelance game design consultant,
He is also a doctoral candidate in English Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where he specializes in Romantic and Victorian literature.
SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE is his debut novel. (from the author's website)"
He has since contributed as a writer and designer to a number of critically acclaimed video games, such as ULTIMA UNDERWORLD II, SYSTEM SHOCK, DEUS EX, and TOMB RAIDER: LEGEND, and has taught and lectured on narrative in video games. He is currently a freelance game design consultant,
He is also a doctoral candidate in English Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where he specializes in Romantic and Victorian literature.
SOON I WILL BE INVINCIBLE is his debut novel. (from the author's website)"
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 31, 2024
Oof. I wanted to love this.
First, before I say anything else: I'm in no way saying that Grossman isn't the real deal or that he misrepresents the games industry in this. There's lots of understandable elisions and simplifications to make this thing work as a story.
I think this is a case of the uncanny valley killing my enjoyment. I've worked in game dev for 17 years and the idea of seeing it in a book was super exciting. I watched the TV show "Looking" mostly because the narrator worked in game dev (and that show was very fun to mock in how incredibly wrong they got everything, almost like they were TRYING to be as wrong as possible. Anyway...) and that was also why I picked up this book. But, oof, this was impossible for me to stomach.
I understand that this is fantasy/sci-fi adjacent fiction and so yes of course you need to overstate the abilities of world sims (particularly in the 80s!) to make your plot work, but the combination of very unrealistic description of what the various games / engines (I WILL NOT LAUNCH INTO A DIATRIBE ON THE MISUSE OF THE WORD ENGINE IN GENERAL I WILL CONTROL MYSELF) were able to do and the pretty realistic description of the every day humdrum work of just creating a whole bunch of content just made me mad too often.
Also can I be petty for a second? I know audio book narrator is a thankless, underpaid job, and often they do incredibly good jobs with little notice. But again, oof. This narrator goes out of his way to mispronounce EVERYTHING. And I'm not talking about terms of art, I'm talking about words like "archivist" (this is an audio book narrator disease; I've yet to hear anyone pronounce it correctly. It's "AR-kuh-vist", not "ar-KIE-vist") and "nVidia", only one of the biggest companies in the world (even in 2013, when this was recorded, EVERYONE even remotely adjacent to videogames would know it's "en-vidia" not "nuh-vidia"). And then the spy game takes us to Paris and the man starts pronouncing French words like it's a made up alien language he can interpret as he likes. I don't need native speaker level perfection, but if you're not sure, just type the word + "pronunciation" into Google and click the play symbol that appears. There. All done.
So sorry. DNF this one. Oof. I think there's probably some fun stuff happening with people crossing over into games and I love that kind of stuff, but I could not go on.
First, before I say anything else: I'm in no way saying that Grossman isn't the real deal or that he misrepresents the games industry in this. There's lots of understandable elisions and simplifications to make this thing work as a story.
I think this is a case of the uncanny valley killing my enjoyment. I've worked in game dev for 17 years and the idea of seeing it in a book was super exciting. I watched the TV show "Looking" mostly because the narrator worked in game dev (and that show was very fun to mock in how incredibly wrong they got everything, almost like they were TRYING to be as wrong as possible. Anyway...) and that was also why I picked up this book. But, oof, this was impossible for me to stomach.
I understand that this is fantasy/sci-fi adjacent fiction and so yes of course you need to overstate the abilities of world sims (particularly in the 80s!) to make your plot work, but the combination of very unrealistic description of what the various games / engines (I WILL NOT LAUNCH INTO A DIATRIBE ON THE MISUSE OF THE WORD ENGINE IN GENERAL I WILL CONTROL MYSELF) were able to do and the pretty realistic description of the every day humdrum work of just creating a whole bunch of content just made me mad too often.
Also can I be petty for a second? I know audio book narrator is a thankless, underpaid job, and often they do incredibly good jobs with little notice. But again, oof. This narrator goes out of his way to mispronounce EVERYTHING. And I'm not talking about terms of art, I'm talking about words like "archivist" (this is an audio book narrator disease; I've yet to hear anyone pronounce it correctly. It's "AR-kuh-vist", not "ar-KIE-vist") and "nVidia", only one of the biggest companies in the world (even in 2013, when this was recorded, EVERYONE even remotely adjacent to videogames would know it's "en-vidia" not "nuh-vidia"). And then the spy game takes us to Paris and the man starts pronouncing French words like it's a made up alien language he can interpret as he likes. I don't need native speaker level perfection, but if you're not sure, just type the word + "pronunciation" into Google and click the play symbol that appears. There. All done.
So sorry. DNF this one. Oof. I think there's probably some fun stuff happening with people crossing over into games and I love that kind of stuff, but I could not go on.
Displaying 1 of 1 review