Book Review - Peterson: Playing at the World (2012).

[jiituomas]

Here's a copy of my Amazon review of Jon Peterson's book Playing at the World. A History of Simulating Wars, People and Fantastic Adventures from Chess to Role-playing Games (San Diego: Unreason Press

Comments

[anonymous]

Playing at the World is a history book, not a book about conceptual theories of play. It only builds the barest framework of terminology for the "moving pieces" of games to show how ideas were transmitted between games over time. Of what research relevant to that history is the author "almost totally ignorant," and what claims of the book are falsified by that research?

[jiituomas]

My issue is that a lot of serious academic work has been written on elements such as the effect of role-playing game rules on the game experience, on game narratives in tabletop play, on immersion into character, on historical re-enactment and on the history of how D&D has affected games that came after it. Peterson repeatedly makes off-handed remarks towards those points, almost never substantiating said claims, and presenting the impression as if he were treading on new ground. This makes many of his extended claims, quite frankly, pedestrian

[ext_1429971]

I'm glad that you found parts of the book useful, but your very strong condemnation of other parts obviously requires a response

[jiituomas]

Jon, thank you very much for taking the time to respond and elaborate your points. Given that an outsider cannot see from the book beyond that it was written "over a period of five years", and published in 2012, it's quite easy to note that relevant-seeming works have come out during that time, ones that would have been found with a simple Google search, the situation creates an image of you having been either ignorant or prejudiced

[ext_1429971]

I am mostly interested in what specific claims I make that you believe to be false, and in which pre-existing works covered the various "weird influences" and dramatizations I described in my last post

[jiituomas]

Mark, please do note that I am at no point calling you "ignorant, prejudiced, arrogant or amateurish". On the contrary, my point is that your chosen approach will cause some to see you as such, and lead them to disregard your work as potentially untrustworthy because of that.

Where our expectations indeed differ is that I think you should have included a few footnotes where you say how your data contrasts existing claims - in an already 700 page volume, that would not have bloated it much, and would give a versed reader a better handle on what you say. In my opinion, "if your research shows that Mackay had it wrong somewhere, say so". Science is made in discourse, not isolation. You yourself, however, seem happy to do just (extremely impressive) data collection, but not much analysis. For me, an integral part of historical research is the reflection on how one's data correlates with existing claims. You've left that almost completely to others.

An example of what I mean by generalization problems is on p. 596: "That much said, few

[ext_1429971]

Thanks for providing a citation that concerns you. Immersion is mentioned throughout the book from p.15 forward, and yes, that page does at least illustrate what immersion is (though I wouldn't say it defines immersion). The specific teaser on p.596 about the confusion between reality and the simulated world of games is there of course to tee up the historical narrative about Egbert which begins on the following page. But more importantly, the first pages of the Epilogue are littered with rhetorical questions, virtually all of which are answered only by my general statement, "We cannot hope to resolve such philosophical quandaries in these pages." There is a clear scope of the book drawn here and elsewhere (in the Introduction especially). Questions of why immersion is created, or how it is a "property," are out. Questions of what happened to Egbert and how this impacted sales of D&D, those are in. Other people are very interested in these philosophical quandaries, I'm sure, and my book isn't trying to comment on them either way -

[jiituomas]

Quoting from Amazon: "I do think it's worth pointing out here that he is a contributor to that Immersive Gameplay book, specifically as co-author of the article "Role-Playing Communities, Cultures of Play and the Discourse of Immersion," so his remarks aren't entirely disinterested."

I didn't expect you to go ad hominem, Jon, and claim reviewer self-interest bias based on one of the over three dozen works I've written over the years, one even irrelevant to the book being reviewed (as it came out much later), excluding issues of potential expertise in pointing out where your claims overextend themselves. That's bad manners, and very unbecoming of an author receiving critique on the potential shortcomings of his own work. Discussion closed as pointless.

[ext_1429971]

You didn't expect me to go ad hominem? Your initial review contains the phrase "he is almost totally ignorant," and you did not get less personal from there. I have quietly weathered these insinuations throughout this thread. But the fact that you promoted your own book in the comment to which I replied is something that scholarly "good manners" requires you to represent.