Book Review - Peterson: Playing at the World (2012).
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
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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 could deny that intense gaming triggered the powerful sense of immersion frequently discussed in the preceding chapters. To what degree, if any, does the property of immersion trigger in players a confusion between reality and the simulated world of games?" This immediately begs questions on what's being meant by "immersion", how is it a "property", why is immersion created, and so forth. Simulation/game research that preceded D&D already tackled with those questions here and there, so it's not even ignorable as just "secondary" or "peripheral".
What it all boils down to where you see only shout-outs and something that needs to be ignored, I see necessary discourse without which a work remains a collection of documented events, not proper historical research. In summary, you excell in the "what happened", but whenever you go into "why", the lack of sufficient grounding and terminological explication makes your claims not nearly as useful or reliable.
Ignoring irrelevant works is fine. "I ignored them because I thought them faulty", however, is not research, its an assertion of one's own superiority without presenting proper grounds for it. Where you could have shown why your work was more accurate, you chose to stay silent and leave most public assessments to the very people whose work you decided to ignore as irrelevant, faulty or both. Therefore you may, like here, get judged by standards others than those you'd like - and be found wanting in some parts that others see as the most valuable.
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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 - though if you asked my personal opinion, I'd say these questions are very hard to answer.
I tried to answer simple questions of fact, which are easier in the sense that you just have to gather evidence to answer them - but since pretty much everyone had gotten these facts wrong, clearly a work setting the record straight was needed. Some people write about the past in order to illustrate points about philosophy, or political science, like say Michel Foucault. Other people write about the past in order to narrate events to improve our understanding of the period in question, like say Edward Gibbon. One of them is a critical theorist and the other is a historian. So actually, I would be proud if my work was nothing but "a collection of documented events." The events are hard enough to solve for, and if I moved the ball forward on documenting them, I will have accomplished my modest purpose. (And yes, I do understand that writing history involves judgment calls and interpretation, but these days people favor putting that heavily-laden cart in front of the horse for reasons that remain obscure to me.)
So in summary, I maintain my book is only "worthless" in respects in which it shouldn't have any worth. It is worthless as a guide to dolphin migration patterns as well. While you seem to think it is arrogant to ignore historical errors in related works, I think that chastizing every author who was misled into believing the Castle & Crusade Society began in 1968, for example, would not be a good use of space. These questions of historical fact are, after all, just peripheral in the works of an author like Mackay. If Foucault slipped and got wrong the date that Bentham wrote about the Panopticon, would that undermine Discipline & Punish? Where secondary sources have intended to cover scopes that I found comparable to mine (like, say Perla's history of wargames, or 40 Years of Gen Con), I did call them out in footnotes and explain their shortcomings. But it would be needlessly pedantic for me to do the same to, say, Mackay. My book is indeed just an anthology of correct details. We needed one. If it is a better foundation for the basic historical framework than the existing works cited by folks like Mackay (say, Mona), then perhaps it will be of use to future authors.
I would rather by judged by the standard of history than of theory. I am however aware that I cannot prevent people from judging me by whatever standard they like.
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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.
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