During the last 20 years, videogames have become a rite of passage for many suburban boys. Pong began the trend in the mid-Seventies, and was succeeded in turn by Missile Command, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Super Mario Brothers, Mortal Kombat, DOOM, Duke Nuk'em and many other ways to while away a boring summer afternoon. (My personal favorites back in the day were Summer Games and Castle Wolfenstein.)

In Joystick Nation, J.C. Herz provides a lively account of the history of videogames, from the very first game (Spacewar, written on a DEC PDP-1 in 1962) through today's wide range of high-powered videogames. The book's 17 chapters cover all aspects of the evolution of electronic gaming, from software design to music to marketing to philosophy, all written in a breezy and approachable style.

Born in 1971, Herz is writing a personal memoir as much as a cultural history, and she discusses at length the ways in which the varieties of videogaming affected the lives and outlooks of the people who participated in them. These passages are both the book's strongest (because they are so often evocative) and weakest (because Herz often over-analyzes).

Herz also provides insight into one of the most notable features of videogaming culture: its maleness. She discusses recent research into why girls don't play videogames, and why boys do. (It might have been more enlightening, however, if she had gone on to explain why she herself played, while her peers didn't.)

The low point ofJoystick Nation comes at its (oddly abrupt) conclusion, where Herz devotes parts of three chapters to the political implications of videogaming. She begins well, by pointing out the shallowness of many conservative denunciations of videogaming, but ends poorly, by airing her own shallow liberal denunciations of the uses of videogaming. (Herz must be given credit for this, however: "After a few sessions [playing "LHX Attack Chopper"] on the Sega Genesis, American kids may not be able to locate Libya on a map, but they know we should bomb the hell out of it.")

Its ending aside, however, Joystick Nation is a fine study of the rise and evolution of the videogaming culture of the American young (and not so young).

Review posted: 5 December 1998