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P L AYepilogue. Dockery concludes that theAmerican cultural embrace of anime is not
simply a fad, and that “none of these franchises show any sign of stopping” (p. 203).
Along with his personal experience
as someone who grew up with Pokémon,Dockery draws information from various journalistic sources, primarily interviews printed in American newspapers,
magazines, and websites. These sources
are occasionally referenced by name in
the text, but Monster Kids contains nofootnotes, endnotes, or list of works cited,leaving it up to the reader to follow up
on interesting leads. I did so on several
occasions, and I was easily able to findDockery’s sources through simple online
searches.
Monster Kids is primarily concernedwith media history at a corporate level
and, for the most part, it eschews descriptions of media fandom at a more local andindividual level. This is not a criticism,
because the book’s tight focus ensures
the successful delivery of its narrative.
The gaps passed over by the broad reachof Monster Kids serve as an invitation for
future research into other aspects of thePokémon franchise, as well as a contextualizing source for more ethnographic andcommunity-specific accounts of its reception and impact.
Based on the accessibility of the writing, the occasionally humorous turns ofphrase, and the charmingly off-brandillustrations by José Elgueta, the target
readership of Monster Kids presumably
falls into a young adult demographic ofteenagers, and I imagine that this bookwould be a welcome addition to any school
library. In addition, the now-grown millennial generation of adults around thesame age as the author may form a significant secondary audience, and Monster
Kids could easily be read for pleasure,especially by fans curious about the reasoning behind the decisions that went into
localizing various Japanese source materials for an American market. Monster
Kids is an excellent resource regarding a
key decade of transition in global media
ecosystems, and its accessibility as a reference work ensures that Dockery’s careful
yet compelling study will entertain andenlighten readers of all ages.
—Kathryn Hemmann, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA

Experimental Games: Critique,Play, and Design in the Age ofGamification
Patrick Jagoda
Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2020. List of figures, prologue,
acknowledgments, notes, ludography,and index. 320 pp. $27.50 paper.
ISBN: 9780226629971
In Experimental Games: Critique, Play,and Design in the Age of Gamification,
Patrick Jagoda argues that experimental
games “have the potential to create new
ways of being, acting, and experimenting
within (and perhaps beyond) our digitaland networked present” (p. 39)..Jagoda
begins this work with an introduction thatprovides an economic history and political framework for understanding video
games as experiments. At the nexus of his
overview of games lies neoliberalism, theagent he proposes has shifted games outBook Reviewsof a particular Cold War mentality andinto the prominent cultural form known
today. Buttressed by affect theory thinkers (such as Aubrey Anable and Jennifer
Doyle), neoliberalist scholars (like political theorist Wendy Brown and sociologist
Maurizio Lazzarato), and cultural theorists (Walter Benjamin and Guy Debord),
Jagoda argues that “games simultaneouslyindex and drive the development of neoliberalism” (p. 12). In doing so, Experimental Games meaningfully establishes how
neoliberalism, as an economic and governing position, fundamentally changes
and is changed by the artistic, culturalexperiments that are enabled by games.
Jagoda identifies seven concepts thatare central to neoliberalism and games—
gamification, experimentation, choice,control, difficulty, failure, improvisation,and joy—which also serve as the grounding topics of the book’s chapters. The firstsection of the book, “Framework,” begins
with the introduction and then the firstchapter, “Gamification,” which details
gamification as a historical paradigm.
In analyzing Candy Crush Saga (KingDigital Entertainment 2012) and Stardew
Valley (Chucklefish 2016) as contemporary examples, Jagoda demonstrates thatgamification provides a connecting tetherbetween games and neoliberalism: that is,game mechanics intrinsically influenceboth work and leisure. The subsequent
chapter, “Experimentation,” argues thatvideo games enable experiments withlife in this historical moment characterized by digital media and networks, as
previous experimental forms much as themodernist novels and avant-garde cinema
did for other historical moments. In thischapter, Jagoda critically considers Star-craft (Blizzard 1998) and Braid (NumberNone 2008) and theorizes the “video gamesensorium”—a term he coins to express
how games condition experience andmodulate affect, encouraging scientifichypothesis testing in addition to artistic
experiment in games and games players.
Chapters 3 through 6 constitute thebook’s second part, “Concepts.” This section aims to complicate neoliberalist concepts from the standpoint of experimental
games. Chapter 3, “Choice,” explores
nonconscious decision making and thelimits and possibilities of choice in ananalysis of The Stanley Parable (GalacticCafe 2013), Moirai (Chris Johnson 2013),
and Undertale (Toby Fox 2015). The nextchapter, “Control,” builds upon the idea ofagency by centering power and an impulse
toward sovereignty, which Jagoda supports
by readings of Dys4ia (Anna Anthropy,2012), Problem Attic (Liz Ryerson 2013),
and Luxuria Superbia (Tale of Tales 2013).
The next two chapters are the mostinventive part of Experimental Games,
providing a direction for future lines ofinquiry for those so interested. Jagoda
introduces three types of difficulty inchapter 5 (titled “Difficulty”)—mechanical, interpretive, and affective difficulty—
and considers two games that use them:Game, Game, Game, and Again Game
(Jason Nelson 2007) and Loved (AlexanderD. Ocias 2010). These types of difficulties
merge with the following chapter, “Failure,” which covers games that challenge
victory-oriented forms of gamification—
particularly SPENT (McKinney Ventures
LLC 2011), An Expatriation in Ten Days(Threshold Land 2010), and Little Inferno(Tomorrow Corporation 2012). In critically considering the role of difficulty and367

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failure, Jagoda argues that these experimental games provide a novel opportunity to shift our attention, as scholars andgame players, from choice and control tostructural inequality.
The last part of the book adopts apractice-based register employing theseconcepts. Chapter 7,“Improvisation,”
investigates Jagoda’s own game the parasite (2017), which was codesigned at theUniversity of Chicago. The parasite invites
improvisational storytelling—a term relevant to many different fields. Throughthis example, Jagoda highlights how
experimental game design may encourage improvisational and unexpected
responses to neoliberalism. Experimental
Games then concludes with “Coda: Joy.”
Here, Jagoda summarizes Ian Bogost’s
critical consideration of the role of fun ingames and similar economic concepts ofthe gratification of pleasure. Jagoda moves
from these understandings of joy to one
instead inspired by Theodor Adorno, Max
Horkeimer, and Baruch Spinoza: “Joyopens up new sensitivities, capacities toaffect and be affected. . . . Experimentation
carries the potential to yield an alternative
notion of games that exceed the superficial pleasures and instant gratification ofso many commercial games championedby the contemporary video game industry” (p. 284).
After finishing Experimental Games,
I was reminded of other understandingsof games as experiments or as a powerful impetus for transformation. I wanted
a clearer takeaway from the conclusion. Ifgames are joyful experiments, what then?
What more has been done, what can bedone in the future, what other games dothis, and so on? To think this through, I

turn to applications of speculative fiction
and queer world building in game scholarship and creation as similar threads on Jagoda’s theme, particularly the investigations
by Doris Rusch and Andrew Phelps intheir article “Existential Transformational
Game Design: Harnessing the ‘Psychomagic’ of Symbolic Enactment” (Frontiers ofScience 2020), Tanja Sihvonen and Jaakko
Stenros in their essay “Queering Games,Play, and Culture through TransgressiveRole-Playing Games” (Transgression inGames and Play 2018), and in Bo Ruberg’s
article “Queer Indie Video Games as an
Alternative Digital Humanities: Counterstrategies for Cultural Critique ThroughInteractive Media” (American Quarterly2018). Interestingly, Jagoda does briefly
bring up such queer overlaps in his overview of affect theory in the introduction,
but he does not elaborate. Further insight
into experimental games and their overlap
with queer indie games might have teased
out the tensions between the queer tendency toward independently developed
games within a larger neoliberal framework and the types of games that tend to
do experimental, transformative work.
Similarly, the concept of the video
game sensorium could benefit from further exploration, because it currently
stands as a rough definition of the typesof experiences that makes games transformational. But the book is more focused on
how games facilitate (joyful) experimentation through seven concepts central toneoliberalism.
Experimental Games weaves neoliberalism with the transformative arts
practices seen in games to conceptualize
better how video games help provide newways of thinking. Throughout this book,Book Reviews

Patrick Jagoda makes thought-provoking
assertions for an understanding of joy andtransformation at the center of games.
—Adrianna Burton, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA

Replayed: Essential Writings
on Software Preservation andGame Histories
Henry Lowood, edited by Raiford Guins,
with a forward by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum and an Interview by T. L. Taylor
Foreword, acknowledgments, editor’sintroduction, bibliography, and index.
358 pp. $50.00 hardcover.
ISBN: 9781421445946
When talking about the past, fresh is rarely
the first qualifier that comes to mind. Yet,this retrospective collection—grouping
previously published and unpublishedpieces written by Henry Lowood overtwo decades—feels refreshing. The editor’s introduction, author’s introductions
for each part of the book, and an interview serving as the collection’s conclusion
breathe new life into Lowood’s contributions to the fields of software preservationand game history by providing a relevant
and important context to the previously
published chapters. Replayed is a valuable
resource to these fields and, as an historianworking within them, I read the book andwished such a resource had been available
when I first dipped my toes into gamepreservation and game history.
Lowood’s many hats, notably as a historian and curator, complement each otherwell and show the worth of cross-disci-

plinary approaches and expertise. Perhaps
one of the more valuable contributions ofthis collection is to show what the history
can contribute to the game field, especiallywhen combined with libraries, archives,and museums. As Raiford Guins argues
in his editor’s introduction, “professionally trained historians lug an entirely different set of tools to a problem” (p. 13). To
me, this reminder is especially importantas I have heard some scholars, sometimes
even colleagues, on several occasions
make the claim that “anyone can do history.” Although academic historians do
not—and should not—have sole ownership of history, dismissing their skills andtechniques is not productive for game andplay studies. Lowood shows this throughout the book, but the chapters entitled“Games Studies Now, History of ScienceThen” and “Game Engine and Game History” exemplify it best. Drawing from historians of technology, like Thomas S. Kuhn
and Michael Mahoney, and from Hayden
White, a historian known for his works
on historiography, Lowood shows what a
professional historian’s ability to tackle bigquestions brings to the table.
Replayed’s sections are well structured
and speak to one another, which makes
each part and the book itself feel cohesive. Every chapter is thought provoking,engaging, and fairly accessible, at least
for a publication dealing with such complex issues, making it a good resource forthose both within and outside academia.
I found myself smiling and chuckling inplaces, and some of Lowood’s rhetoricalstrategies were very effective in making hisarguments even stronger. I would, however, have liked to see more about minor
games. When talking about video games

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