Discussed: Jarrett Kobek, Soft & Cuddly; Charlotte Reber, Dragon Age II

In the last four days, I have spent something like 15 hours playing Baldur’s Gate III. This anecdote is as good a reason as any to explain why I don’t play video games all that much: I can get obsessive about them, and the reasons to keep playing pile up. I just need another 20 minutes or Just let me finish this one last quest. I end up spending more time reading about video games than I actually do playing them. See also: Elden Ring lore videos.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I’ve picked up and enjoyed a couple of Boss Fight Books’ titles over the years. In the last few months, I’ve read two — and while the styles and eras of gaming chronicled in each are very different, there’s something similarly ominous in each one. A final boss to end all final bosses, one might say.

First up: Charlotte Reber’s Dragon Age II. While not every Boss Fight title I’ve read has been about a game I was familiar with, this is a game I know very well. Yet of the three Dragon Age games I’ve played, II has historically been my least favorite. What’s notable about Reber’s book is the way the author explores some of the flaws in the game and convincingly argues that certain elements of the game are, in fact, assets.

There are elements of criticism (in the sense of it as a discipline) found here: Reber argues that Dragon Age II’s configuration as a game with a not-entirely-reliable narrator adds welcome ambiguity to a genre not known for having much of it. And the interviews with many of the creators behind the game illustrate the process by which studio BioWare works and the means by which a highly-anticipated game like this is created. (More on that shortly.)

A few weeks later, I sat down with Jarett Kobek’s Soft & Cuddly. (Full disclosure: Kobek and I are both contributing editors for Zona Motel.) I have never played this game; I was also familiar with the ZX Spectrum, the system on which it was designed to be played. And if you’d told me that Kobek had made the whole thing up and that I’d actually read a novella about the cutthroat world of 1980s U.K. video gaming, I’d believe you. (The game is very real; also, it looks not unlike a video art installation from someone’s nightmares. Maybe mine.) Kobek goes big with the scope: in telling the story of Soft & Cuddly, he also tells the story of both personal computers and gaming in the early 1980s, with a focus on the U.K.

Despite the big differences in style between the two books, they have one thing in common besides a publisher. In telling the stories of an acclaimed game studio working with intense deadlines (Reber) and how a young programmer created a truly bizarre and disturbing game (Kobek), each book winds up being at least somewhat about the business of manufacturing and distributing video games.

In the case of Soft & Cuddly, the company behind the Spectrum wound up — like many others in similar situations — unable to deal with a market experiencing rapid booms and busts. In the case of Dragon Age II, software giant EA buying BioWare and betting on bigger and bigger outcomes proved disastrous for BioWare’s independence. As Reber writes early in the book, BioWare having employees dedicated to specific games was rare for the industry; over the period covered in her book, readers can see that phenomenon become even more rare.

Reber succinctly documents shifting labor practices in the gaming industry, which has largely worked out badly for workers. (The experience of BioWare is not unique, sadly.) This cautionary tale manifests in a different way through Kobek’s book, where you’re never far removed from the presence and practices of Margaret Thatcher’s government — not exactly known for its friendliness to organized labor. Perhaps there’s a deeper reason the “ethical consumption is impossible under capitalism” meme prominently features a certain video game mascot. Either way, it begs the question: just how many hit points does an invisible hand have, anyway?

Recent Work

My forthcoming book on Kill List has a cover! (And it’s pretty.) Out December 10 wherever books are sold.

In a feature for Publishers Weekly, I chronicled boutique Blu-ray imprints pairing movies and books. Writing at On the Seawall, I discussed Avigayl Sharp’s Offseason. At Reactor, I reviewed Nick Cutter’s The Dorians and Jedediah Barry’s Kill All Wizards. I wrote about five books out in translation in the month of June for Words Without Borders.