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fisk42's review against another edition
3.0
I probably would have rated this lower if I weren't a computer programmer interested in video games.
Don't read this if you're expecting Ready Player One part 2. It's a good book, but they're not very similar.
Overall it's a decent read, and I could tell that there is an awesome book underneath. It's just not executed as well as it could have been.
Don't read this if you're expecting Ready Player One part 2. It's a good book, but they're not very similar.
Overall it's a decent read, and I could tell that there is an awesome book underneath. It's just not executed as well as it could have been.
bengriffin's review against another edition
2.0
I was suckered in by the Superbrothers cover which I knew was a bad move on my part but I persevered anyway, and sadly lost a lot of time to this book. I'm not quite sure who it's aimed at as it over explains games at some point and descends into inside baseball at others. It's chronically dull, has zero likeable characters, and nothing particularly driving the plot. The only reason I carried on until the end was to see if something happened that made it all worthwhile. It didn't. Avoid.
sammy_stenger's review against another edition
2.0
i liked the concept and the writing style, but the plot really wasn’t there
dave_white's review against another edition
4.0
YOU is a bout Russel - 28 year old college drop out. Not quite a lawyer, not an English major either. Lost and disappointed in life (or himself) he gets a job with a game making company of his high school friends. Not quite though, one of them is dead and another one left to create another game company. Russel struggle with a newly assigned position of lead designer on a new game while hunting for a bug which might have taken root in their childhoods.
It's a great mix of video game history, technology, friendship and self reflection. Narration might have some problems, but it sure makes connection with a certain kind of people (amongst them - myself).
Not for everybody, but it sure is not bad.
P.S. Ready Player One fans be warned. While it shares common themes, this book is not of same ilk. Just so you don't get disappointed.
It's a great mix of video game history, technology, friendship and self reflection. Narration might have some problems, but it sure makes connection with a certain kind of people (amongst them - myself).
Not for everybody, but it sure is not bad.
P.S. Ready Player One fans be warned. While it shares common themes, this book is not of same ilk. Just so you don't get disappointed.
grid's review against another edition
3.0
This started to get a bit too abstract toward the end. It's funny, I listened to this on audiobook, and have a WORSE concept of pacing as a result. I really have no idea where it basically stopped being about the main character, and became set almost entirely in the fictional world of the video game. But that's where it kinda started to loose me. Wish I had written this review closer to the time I listened to the book, because I can't remember much else, other than some details about the epic (10-20 hour?) battles the kids had in the original version of the game. (At a camp for software development no less.)
evanmc's review against another edition
3.0
I really liked this book, as the setting and main character drew me into an unfamiliar world of game design. My biggest gripe is the fact that the teased 'Mystery' of the death of one of the main character's childhood friends is never investigated, never solved, and left as a huge glaring loose end that kept this from being an either 4 star or 5 star book in my opinion.
tnanz's review against another edition
5.0
I mean five stars for sure, I thoroughly enjoyed it and think anyone with even a passing knowledge of Mariokart or Runescape would feel the same way. But at the same time, I'm not sure this book had an ending? And I definitely didn't find out as much about the characters as I wanted to (Darren in particular doesn't really make sense to me. I don't get him. Maybe that's a good thing though?), but I can live with that. The insight into gaming structure and development was shockingly accessible and fascinating. The Cambridge/Somerville/Alewife setting came through shockingly clearly. I think it's the characters that are still giving me pause, that make this book less than perfect. While they are fascinating and well rounded, they don't shift or move or grow at all during the narrative. Something about that constancy doesn't feel right.
But again, thoroughly enjoyed it, will be immediately sending copies to my brother and father, and will most likely read it again. Certainly makes me want to pick up more of Grossman's books, the prose itself was top notch (particularly impressive in this highly technical setting).
But again, thoroughly enjoyed it, will be immediately sending copies to my brother and father, and will most likely read it again. Certainly makes me want to pick up more of Grossman's books, the prose itself was top notch (particularly impressive in this highly technical setting).
nakedsushi's review against another edition
2.0
An account of making video games at a fictional video game company. This sounds right up my alley, right? Unfortunately, it fell short of my high expectations. The writing is noticeably sloppy at times, like when the narrator somehow knows everything another character is thinking, feeling, and seeing. Then it jumps to second person perspective for no good reason. Then there's a whole lot of telling, not showing.
This isn't the 80s face-explosion that [b:Ready Player One|9969571|Ready Player One|Ernest Cline|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333576871s/9969571.jpg|14863741] is, but it does have numerous references to video games in the 90s and early 2000s. Yes, some of them were necessary, but other times it just seemed excessive.
The main problem I had with this book was that about halfway through it, I wanted it to end. I had already guessed where the story was going and while I could see that Grossman tried to make the characters complex, they were still too one-dimensional and stereotypical for me. They had about as much depth as a video game character. In fact, I've played games that had more depth to the story than this one.
Another major nitpick I have with this are the technical inaccuracies. No, I've never been a professional game developer, but I am a developer and I do know the process we take when trying to examine and fix bugs. And the process Russell and the Black Arts crew took when searching for a large bug was just nonsensical. It's like when Hollywood shows what happens when people are "hacking" or "programming" or doing anything vaguely technical. Yuck.
This isn't the 80s face-explosion that [b:Ready Player One|9969571|Ready Player One|Ernest Cline|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333576871s/9969571.jpg|14863741] is, but it does have numerous references to video games in the 90s and early 2000s. Yes, some of them were necessary, but other times it just seemed excessive.
The main problem I had with this book was that about halfway through it, I wanted it to end. I had already guessed where the story was going and while I could see that Grossman tried to make the characters complex, they were still too one-dimensional and stereotypical for me. They had about as much depth as a video game character. In fact, I've played games that had more depth to the story than this one.
Another major nitpick I have with this are the technical inaccuracies. No, I've never been a professional game developer, but I am a developer and I do know the process we take when trying to examine and fix bugs. And the process Russell and the Black Arts crew took when searching for a large bug was just nonsensical. It's like when Hollywood shows what happens when people are "hacking" or "programming" or doing anything vaguely technical. Yuck.
samusiamus's review against another edition
2.0
I bought this book when it came out and didn't get around to reading it until now, I actually just finished his first novel "Soon I Will Be Invincible". The debut novel was not a satisfactory read, and I hoped that YOU was going to be an improvement as the mark of an experienced author. It is worse, in my opinion.
I liked the premise and was interested in the suggested enigma of the mysterious death of Simon, a video game programmer prodigy and distant friend of the main character, Russell. However, YOU is not even about Simon and does not mention him that often. We don't even learn how he died or when, exactly. This is a book about Russell and his friend group (which includes Simon) in high school, how they created this video game for a class project, continued it during a nerdy summer camp, and developed it into a popular game franchise--but ultimately how Russell grew apart from them during their last year in high school to focus on college; how he barely reached out to his former friends until he had a crisis of some sort and decided he didn't want to be a lawyer, he wanted to fall back into the exciting uncertainty of video game design with his former friends.
It's also a sort of walkthrough through almost every game this fictional developer, Black Arts, made. Literally a walkthrough, disguised as Russell playing through the whole backlog to understand the games, to understand Simon a little more, and to figure out the origination of this game-breaking bug interspersed with flashback. The perspective changes often, and there are random interludes of Russell talking to the characters of the game as if they existed in the real world (but as their video game selves). These moments are not introduced in anyway, they just happen and you don't know if it's something he is daydreaming, actually dreaming, or hallucinating. The narration will change from "Leira and I" when Russel is talking about playing a game, to using "we", to using "you" without ceremony.
Towards the end of the book, I was getting really bored with reading about the next game's history, the character bios, and then an apparent write-up of someone ("you") playing through the game and what the story is. It felt like I was reading a video game manual and I was getting annoyed that the confrontation that it had been building up to was not only anti-climactic, but it didn't reveal anything about Simon like one would expect. In the grand scheme of things, Simon is barely a blip in this whole story even though the summary makes it sounds like he is one of the driving forces of the story and why Russell is there. On the inside flap it says, "but mostly he needs to know what happened to Simon, his strangest and most gifted friend, who died under mysterious circumstances soon after Black Arts' breakout hit". But Russell never learns about what happened to him, and doesn't really seem all that concerned about Simon during the entire book. Just... slightly regretful.
My only guess as to why this was so badly written--and dry-- is because Grossman is a "video game design consultant, which is nothing like being a story writer. He tried to put too many things into one book and it became over-convoluted and meaningless.
I liked the premise and was interested in the suggested enigma of the mysterious death of Simon, a video game programmer prodigy and distant friend of the main character, Russell. However, YOU is not even about Simon and does not mention him that often. We don't even learn how he died or when, exactly. This is a book about Russell and his friend group (which includes Simon) in high school, how they created this video game for a class project, continued it during a nerdy summer camp, and developed it into a popular game franchise--but ultimately how Russell grew apart from them during their last year in high school to focus on college; how he barely reached out to his former friends until he had a crisis of some sort and decided he didn't want to be a lawyer, he wanted to fall back into the exciting uncertainty of video game design with his former friends.
It's also a sort of walkthrough through almost every game this fictional developer, Black Arts, made. Literally a walkthrough, disguised as Russell playing through the whole backlog to understand the games, to understand Simon a little more, and to figure out the origination of this game-breaking bug interspersed with flashback. The perspective changes often, and there are random interludes of Russell talking to the characters of the game as if they existed in the real world (but as their video game selves). These moments are not introduced in anyway, they just happen and you don't know if it's something he is daydreaming, actually dreaming, or hallucinating. The narration will change from "Leira and I" when Russel is talking about playing a game, to using "we", to using "you" without ceremony.
Towards the end of the book, I was getting really bored with reading about the next game's history, the character bios, and then an apparent write-up of someone ("you") playing through the game and what the story is. It felt like I was reading a video game manual and I was getting annoyed that the confrontation that it had been building up to was not only anti-climactic, but it didn't reveal anything about Simon like one would expect. In the grand scheme of things, Simon is barely a blip in this whole story even though the summary makes it sounds like he is one of the driving forces of the story and why Russell is there. On the inside flap it says, "but mostly he needs to know what happened to Simon, his strangest and most gifted friend, who died under mysterious circumstances soon after Black Arts' breakout hit". But Russell never learns about what happened to him, and doesn't really seem all that concerned about Simon during the entire book. Just... slightly regretful.
My only guess as to why this was so badly written--and dry-- is because Grossman is a "video game design consultant, which is nothing like being a story writer. He tried to put too many things into one book and it became over-convoluted and meaningless.