A welcome addition to the body of original Russian-language game studies literature, an extremely dense book that straddles the line between high-brow scholarly analysis and a popular explainer, while inventing (or sometimes adapting) a big handful of novel typologies and frameworks to the topic of video game avatars (e.g. a highly intuitive and productive classification of avatars into Ghosts, Personas, Golems, and Puppets — I started playing with it in my head right away).
In fact, the book says (and I suspect that's true) that this topic is woefully understudied in English as well — it's like some implicitly glossed-over blindspot in the discourse around games. How game avatars work and change over time, how we use them to interact with games, and what about them makes games what they are. Because of that, the book requires a good deal of brain-wracking, and its concepts take time to settle in: the way they differentiate games is often perpendicular to most familiar typologies like genres or game design approaches.
Lots of non-trivial old game examples, surprising historical/cultural analogies and witty observational asides, lots of additional reading in the copious footnotes, and a fair bit of humor thrown in. Not the easiest read, but very rewarding. I would propose the following English title: Video Game Avatars: Crafting Virtual Heroes, Puppets, and Angels. Also I gave the book a 4.75 just because I could.
Я слишком неумный, чтобы выдать для этой книги обоснованное и многоэтажное ревью, поэтому скажу, что в рамках русскоязычной game-studies литературы аналогов у "Аватаров Видеоигр" нет, потому что никто, в принципе, прежде не рассматривал игровую телесность настолько пристально, и ещё при этом не залипая на себя в зеркало.
Также в книге присутствует много забавных фактоидов, которые разбавляют общенаучный текстовый корпус и подогревают дальнейший интерес к прочтению.