Book Pimp: Last Time, Maybe

Thousands of satisfied gamers have been caressing their exquisite hardcover copies of my obscenely fascinating book about videogames, This Gaming Life, and you can too! It's true. Click onwards for some more information on what some critics are calling "the best book that Jim wrote about videogames to be published this year", as well as alternative ordering methods for folks unable to obtain a copy in Europe.

This Gaming Life, published by The University of Michigan Press, is about gamers and their relationship to games. It's a ripe barrel of essays on gaming, as filtered through the lens of my own international travels and videogaming obsessions. Reporting from London, Reykjavik and Seoul, I investigate all kinds of gaming, especially that pesky PC gaming that I keep banging on about via the interweb. I muse on Nintendo-trained surgeons, Quake III zealots, military propaganda, Will Wright, Eve Online, cute girls in pink dresses, Starcraft in Korea, Chinese online riots, prosthetic reality, science fiction, Henry Jenkins, unemployment, boredom, obsession, our enemy Boris Johnson, and Okami. I've never worked so hard in my entire life.

You can see some extracts of the book, and perhaps even glimpse a hint of the book's lexicographic opulence, in this Google preview thing.

But don't just take it from me...

Splash Damage's senior designer Ed Stern said: "It does a far better job of explaining what being into games is like than I ever have, which is why I've just ordered multiple copies for my parents and siblings to act as advocates to explain what the hell it is that I do and why it's fun."

Massively columnist Cameron Sorden said: "If you’re serious about games and the culture of gaming, the read is worth the price of admission."

And some other guy said it was rubbish, but he was wrong.

Americans! Obtain your copy here.

Europeans, try here, or, for a quicker dispatch, the official distributors here.

Cheers!