Book Reviewssocial impact games, chapter 4 provides aninteresting discussion of the cultural andinstitutional constraints that a research
environment places on a design team thatfits nicely within current conversations
about the difficulties associated with AAA(big budget) and Indie production. Chapters 7 and 8 get bogged down in the minutia of projects that did not work out but
should still be of interest to readers intent
on pursuing similar research objectives.
More attention to inclusivity anddiversity in the field of social-impact
games would have been a welcomed
addition to the book. And there are times
when Squire slips into a futurist rhetoricthat focuses on where games designed forlearning could be (as opposed to wheregames designed for learning are at). But
these speculations are accompanied by
frank and honest appraisals of the difficulties that his design teams faced—difficulties ranging from engaging students(chapter 3) and targeting commercial markets (chapter 7) to convincing risk-averse
administrators that a game design teamdeserves continuous financial support(chapter 4). Overall, it is the discussionof these difficulties that makes the bookstand out, especially for a broader audience interested in production histories andcultures in general.
—David Murphy, Toronto Metropolitan
University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Free-to-Play: Mobile Video
Games, Bias, and Norms
Christopher A. Paul
Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,2020. Introduction, conclusion,acknowledgments, notes, bibliography,and index. 512 pp. $30.00, paper.
ISBN: 9780262539418
In Free-to-Play: Mobile Video Games,
Bias, and Norms, Christopher A Paultakes both academic game studies and lay
gaming culture to task for their endemic
dismissiveness of the increasingly important world of free-to-play (F2P) mobilegames. Unsatisfied with game journalists’and fans’ claims that F2P monetization
leads inevitably to poor game design, Paulsets out to diagnose the deep-seated bias
running through the heavily—but subtly—freighted evaluative norms by whichgamers and reviewers elevate premium,
pay-once experiences and denigrate theconspicuously feminized world of F2P
gaming. Paul reveals these biases by juxtaposing core gaming culture’s ostensibly
rational oppositions to F2P games with its
other, more credulous treatments of morefamiliar pay-once game objects. Whatemerges from the book’s surprisingly
diverse set of case studies is an image ofF2P skepticism informed less by concerns
about exploitative monetization practices
or predatory marketing models as by “abit of snobbery and gate-keeping” by an“old guard … defensive about sharing theirhobby with games they don’t understandand gamers they don’t recognize” (p. xxv).
By “giving context to the norms and values
that underlie perceptions of core gamers,
journalists, developers, and game scholars”(p. xxxvi), Paul’s book provides a muchneeded surface on which game studies
scholars can trace a more nuanced, more
gradational aesthetic map to the increasingly diverse world of F2P games.

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P L AYIn the first half of Free-to-Play, comprising the book’s first three chapters, Paullays the groundwork necessary for themore comparative mode he adopts in his
latter four chapters. His base is made up
of quick theoretical and historical sketches
intended to explode the illusion of naturalness around the pay-once commodity
pricing model that many gamers laud as
the ideal structure for game monetization.
In this first half,
Paul runs his readers through thehistory of “pay-to-win” arcade design,
the emergence of the three dominant F2Pmonetization strategies, and the strategies
that core gamers use to both resist and torationalize their spending on F2P games.
In each case, Paul demonstrates that thedominant arguments against F2P monetization—that it is exploitative, that it leads
to poor and imbalanced design, and thatit corrupts the trust established between
designer and player—often “[hang] onpreferences presented as facts” (p. 34).
The preferences themselves will be familiar to readers of Paul’s previous Toxic
Meritocracy of Video Games: “fairness”
understood as equality rather than equityand “worth” understood as merit accrued
through work and subcultural dedication.
Paul’s theoretical stage set, the author
then turns to his case studies to tease out
the complex ideological rationalization
happening behind the scenes. In chapter
5, for instance, Paul seeks to understandhow some masculinized or “hard-core”
F2P games like Riot’s League of Legends
or Wargaming’s World of Tanks Blitz
manage to escape the vitriol heaped uponfeminized F2P games like Glu’s Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.
Looking closely at numerous reviews

for all three games, Paul concludes thatsince World of Tanks has the same “payto-win” monetization that gamers claim
to loathe in games like Kim Kardashian,gamers’ aversion to F2P games is lessdependent on monetization models thanon the preconceived legitimacy of different
game genres.
Put simply, gamers who are willing to rationalize away the potentiallyexploitative monetization structures inWorld of Tanks’ conventional war gaming
are conspicuously unwilling to advancethe same generosity to fashion sims like
Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. This obvious bias includes theming as well; in hislast chapter, Paul points out that manyof the critics who wrote glowing reviewsof Marvel Avengers Academy panned thealmost-identical (but feminized) Disney
Magic Kingdom on the basis of the stylealone.
As vital a corrective as Free-to-Playis, the book’s analytical frame weakens
its otherwise impressive argument. In hisintroduction, Paul explains that the book“is designed to help illustrate how thosebiases are enacted in an effort to start acredulous, nuanced criticism of free-toplay and mobile games. Articulating whatis okay in mobile and free-to-play games
and where the line is requires understanding these games on their own merits” (p. xi,emphasis mine). I agree wholeheartedly
with Paul’s insistence that we treat systematically overlooked phenomena in gaming culture on their own merits, including
everything from ports to clone games
to merchandise. But Paul never reallyengages with F2P games on their ownterms, electing instead to focus entirely
on gaming culture’s terms for F2P. TwoBook Reviews

shortcomings emerge from this decision.
First, Paul’s decision to focus on gamersand “core” gaming culture ironically continues to center the same perspectives thatPaul claims we need to get away from.
Rather than centering the aesthetic
norms and divergent cultural assumptions that he associates with the highly
feminized and postcolonial players of
F2P games, Paul chooses instead to talkagain about the same core gamers thefield has exhaustively analyzed since itsinception. And second, Paul’s tight focus
on gaming culture means that the bookwraps up without providing a more constructive alternative. Those coming to thisbook hoping for a toolbox of concepts withwhich they might develop that “credulous,nuanced criticism of free-to-play andmobile games” (p. xi) may leave feelingless well equipped than they might prefer.

Critiques notwithstanding, Paul’sFree-to-Play remains a must read for gamestudies scholars or any scholars interested
in the social origins of ludic aesthetics. His
central argument that game studies andgame culture alike have a tendency tonaturalize their own assumptions should
alert scholars of games and play to just
how much of game culture remains hidden beneath the water. Paul rightfullyargues that perhaps the biggest challenge
facing game studies today is overcoming
the inertia that creeps into the academy
through mainstream gaming culture.
Though Free-to-Play may be more criticalthan constructive at points, Paul’s call for
us to “map our collective blind spots” (p.
xxxvi) nevertheless points a way forward
for new kinds of games scholarship.
—Logan Brown, Indiana University,
Bloomington, IN217