Significant Zero: Heroes, Villains, and the Fight for Art and Soul in Video Games

“It’s natural to wish things weren’t this way, but it won’t change anything,” notes Williams, a former video game writer, in this insightful memoir. “You either agree to the cost or move on with your life.” He is referring specifically to the “crunch,” the wearying, health-threatening final months of a game’s development cycle, but his story of a decade spent in the gaming industry is full of that “it is what it is” ethos. Williams’s positions are defiantly his own, as idiosyncratic as his path into the profession (he was introduced to a Take-Two Interactive employee via connections in a secret society of antiauthoritarians). His book gives readers a useful behind-the-scenes look at how games are made and offers some advice for aspiring creators—often simultaneously practical and tongue-in-cheek. Its most striking observations, however, are on how modern video games differ from older kinds of games, in that the rules are “fluid” and not “rigid,” and on the gaming industry’s current failings, such as a reliance on protagonists who represent blatant wish-fulfillment fantasies. Williams concludes with a hopeful vision for the future of gaming, as long as his former peers are ready to put in the work to tell more daring and unique stories. (Sept.)