Video Games: The Most Dominant Popular Art Form of Our Time
I was fascinated by the concept of Tom's book: video games as more than a casual, throwaway pursuit for kids (and adults who still want to be kids), but instead something more serious and consequential. Tom says video games are the most dominant popular art form of our time, with critically important social implications. They are certainly a moneymaker not to be trifled with. As we explained in our recent Weekend Journal piece, last year Americans bought $20.2 billion (with a B) worth of video games and software, exceeding even the might movie industry (which grossed $18.7 billion in box office and DVD sales).
I hope you like the Q&A below, and if you get a time, pick up the book. It's a thought-provoking meditation on the modern and ever-expanding gaming world (even though I think I'll always be partial to EA's NHL Hockey '94).
Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?
Tom Bissell: The fact that video games began to compel me in a way that seemed unfamiliar, and that I found myself thinking about them more and more as sophisticated creative works worthy of serious discussion--and that they still seemed frequently weird and stupid, at the same time.
JG: What surprised you the most during the writing process?
TB: That this was the only book of the five books I've written that pretty much came out exactly as I'd hoped and planned it to. Most books are a series of retreats. This one poured out of me in a way that felt almost triumphal.
JG: What would you be doing if you weren't a writer?
TB: This is a question that may well keep me up tonight weeping. I have absolutely no idea. I am going to guess, though, and say Espionage Expert.
JG: What else are you reading right now?
TB: I'm reading a galley of Eliza Griswold's very beautiful and sad travel book The Tenth Parallel, about the part of the world where Christian and Muslim culture collide, and Dave Cullen's definitive nonfiction account, Columbine, about Columbine, which is about as spooky as anything I've read.
JG: What's next for you?
TB: I'm currently beginning to work on the writing side of video-game development and I am finishing a travel book about the supposed tombs of the Twelve Apostles.
