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themselves without offering wider insights
into their production, reception, or place
within the broader market economy of thetrans-Atlantic world. These close textual
analyses often left me wanting some ofthe structural investigations of publishing, business, and readership that have soenergized the history of the book for thelast three decades. How were these games
made? What sort of businesses purveyed
them? What did players think of them?
Playing Games in Nineteenth-Century
Britain and America also seems oddly disconnected from the boom in game studies
over the last twenty years. At times theselacunae seemed especially strange. The
book’s introduction, for example, offersa lengthy list of museums and libraries
who are collecting and exhibiting boardgames—citing the Grand Rapids Public
Museum’s 2020 LaughFest and the ability
to play historic games at Stuhr Museumof the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island,
Nebraska—but for some reason it does
not mention the Strong National Museumof Play’s collection of board games, likely
the most comprehensive in the world (andwhose holdings one contributor cited as
being vital for her research).
The articles also lacked engagementwith important game scholarship ofrecent years. An article on the history ofwar games, for example, didn’t mention
Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World or Pat
Harrigan and Matthew Kirschenbaum’sedited collection Zones of Control: Perspectives on Wargaming. And there was little or
no reference to scholars exploring games
not just as texts but also as ludic objects.
Here the insights of authors such as Paul

Booth, Mia Consalvo, and Mary Flanagan
might have been helpful. A game, after all,while containing elements of literature andart, is fundamentally a play device, and it
needs to be read in ways that foregroundthe play.
In the end, scholars seeking information on particular nineteenth-century
games and play forms will find individual
articles quite valuable, but the book as
a whole could have entered into deeper
conversation with the latest scholarshipon play and games.
—Jon-Paul C. Dyson, The Strong, Rochester, NY

The Hidden Politics ofChildren’s Online Spaces,
Virtual Worlds, andConnected Games
Sara M. Grimes
Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto
Press, 2021. Acknowledgments, notes,bibliography, and index. 358 pp. $44.95
paper. ISBN: 9781442615564
In The Hidden Politics of Children’s Online
Spaces, Virtual Worlds, and Connected
Games, Sara M. Grimes explores virtualworlds, online spaces, and connected
games in a new light. In the author’s own
words, “The objective of this book is toprovide such a vantage point through anin-depth critical exploration of the present and history of children’s connected(online, networked, or otherwise webenabled) games—what they look like,how they operate, who makes them, whoregulates them, and what they are used forBook Reviews

and why” (pp.14–15). She aims to establish
a new and more holistic view of children’s
technologies that can be used as a framework for future work in this space.
Focusing on the specific areas ofprivacy, commercialization, censorship,and ownership, Grimes takes the reader
through a history of connected games
to highlight how these issues have beenaddressed in the past. She wants the discussions to “lay the groundwork for a
critical consideration of how existingapproaches might be used in the development of new regulation and best practices
for the industries involved in making children’s digital play spaces” (p.12). Grimes
concludes by identifying major problems
within digital playgrounds and issues a callto action to improve them going forward.
In chapter 1, “The Importance ofDigital Play,” Grimes introduces readers to the current landscape of children’s
online play to orient them toward themajor issues she addresses throughout
the book. Chapter 2, “Small Worlds andWalled Gardens,” begins by introducing
data about how often and how many children have played digital games (including
those not online) over the past twenty-plus
years. Grimes then walks readers througha history of trends and influences on
online games developed for children, noting four distinct categories: arcade, portal,
themed-game environment, and MMOG
(massively multiplayer online game).
In chapter 3, “CommercializingPlay(grounds),” Grimes digs into thefirst of four major issues she tackles inthis book, commercialization. By putting
scholars of technology and science in conversation with children’s media theorists,Grimes emphasizes the staunch difference

between the level of branded and commercial content in children’s online spaces.
Chapter 4, “From Rules of Play to Censorship,” focuses on an exploration of thedifferent ways in which children’s online
spaces are governed through design, game
affordances, moderation, and policy. She
makes the point that, “Conversely, thelevel and depth of top-down control
available to the makers of digital playgrounds are unparalleled, only minimallyregulated, and largely unchallenged” (p.
134). In chapter 5, “Safety First, Privacy
Later,” Grimes digs into the complicatedinterplay between privacy laws meant
to protect children and common business practices that infringe on children’s
privacy. Chapter 6 pivots to focusing on
creator rights for children and how thebalance of privacy and ownership is currently being negotiated. Grimes discusses
games like Minecraft and Roblox as hubs
for children to create art, games within thegame, and other content with ambiguous
final ownership rights. In the final chapter,
Grimes ties together previous argumentsfrom throughout the work and concludes
with four challenges for the future.
The strengths of this text lie in
Grimes’s comprehensive approach to
examining digital playgrounds from as
many relevant angles of scholarship as
possible. All-in-all, Grimes has done
work in this book that is sure to informand impact generations of online playspaces. The immediate audiences for thisbook would be anyone interested in online
connected play spaces, policy in games,
children’s media scholars, or designers.
Parents, educators, child development
specialists, and psychologists would also
benefit from reading this work. Grimes

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presents a comprehensive and situated start
to understanding online play spaces; andthat makes this work much more approachable than many other academic texts.
—Jes Klass, DePaul University, Chicago, IL

Achievement Relocked: LossAversion and Game Design
Geoffrey EngelsteinCambridge, MA: The MIT Press,2020. On Thinking playfully, preface,introduction, notes, and index. 135 pp.
$30.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780262043533
In Achievement Relocked, Geoffrey Engelstein does a wonderful job presenting thescience behind loss aversion and how touse it as a lens for understanding player
psychology and designing better games.
Engelstein compellingly illustrates theways games present rewards and punishment to influence players. The author
shows that even small changes like starting people toward a goal can encouragethem to complete it, or how—dependingon the size—numbers can carry different
meaning to different people in different
situations and in turn can change how
they make choices. This opens a different way to think about how players will
navigate a game environment and gives
designers another tool to craft an enjoyable experience for their players. ThroughEngelstein’s thought experiments, he demonstrates how game mechanics tuned toelicit specific reactions can lead players todifferent and perhaps more desirable playexperiences.
Throughout Achievement Relocked,

Engelstein illuminates principles that help
inform our understanding of how players navigate game environments. Each ofthese principles presents opportunities
for designers to create better games. The
author presents loss aversion as the different reactions that people have when theygain something as a reward compared towhen they lose something as punishment.
Specifically, even when the amounts are thesame, loss is more impactful than reward,
showing that people are inclined to avoidloss. Using this insight, game designers canbetter think about how players will react
to mechanics that are designed to give ortake away player resources. Similarly, theauthor presents the endowment effect asdifferent reactions the feeling of ownership
elicits over loss. When individuals gain asense of ownership or closeness to an item,the threat of loss connected to that itemchanges, and game designers can create
more player investment in the environments and characters in their games.
Engelstein points out that the framingof a scenario can change how an individual
reacts to potential loss or gain. If players
focus on loss, he notes, they will be more
likely to avoid it, and game designers who
understand this can frame game events tocreate more tension or soften losses. Utility theory, which says that the value you
put on something influences your perception of its loss (and increases your sense of
reward in not losing it), offers designers
support for how they control player reactions. This lens helps teach them how tocreate value around currency, resources,or characters to control how players feelreward and loss.
The author also discusses endowment
progress—or the change in reactions to