You

Let's admit something about video games. They are boring. They induce a state of focus that is totally absorbing but useless -- like the ghost of work or creative play, but without engaging the world in any way. They are designed to focus attention but don't train you to overcome the obstacles to being focused. They are fun but don't tend to make a person more interesting. The rewards are false coin -- they are rarely satisfying or moving. More often, the offer something like a hunger for the next game, promising a revelation or catharsis that they never quit fulfill, that they don't even know how to fulfill. They work in a single small corner of the emotional world, stirring feelings of anger or fear or a sense of accomplishment; they don't reach for any kind of fuller experience of humanity.

But when I thought about story, I felt I couldn't really be wrong.

Because when I lay awake at night I wanted to be in a story; I wanted it so badly it was an ache in my bones. Anything story but the story I was in, of early disappointment and premature world-weariness. I wanted to feel like I was at the start of a story worth being in, instead of being twenty-eight and feeling like my story was already over, like it was the most boring, botched story imaginable.

I used to love books in which somebody from our reality got to go to another world. The Narnia books, the Fionavar books. Isn't that what we could do, take people into another world? If not, why not? Why couldn't that be what we did?

There's the central focus of YOU: A Novel. Can someone – genius programmer or rookie game designer – take this difficult-to-vocalize aim for video games and run with it? What stands in the way – technology or human ability or maybe human frailty?

If you take the love of video games and late 20th Century American pop culture from Cline's [b:Ready Player One|9969571|Ready Player One|Ernest Cline|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1333576871s/9969571.jpg|14863741]; the ability of Michael Chabon in [b:The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay|3985|The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay|Michael Chabon|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1355094690s/3985.jpg|2693329] to tell a compelling story while also giving a history of a creation of a medium; and mix them with Lev Grossman's [b:The Magicians|6101718|The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)|Lev Grossman|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1313772941s/6101718.jpg|6278977] series' sense of disillusionment that comes from childhood loves and obsessions meeting with the real world – you might get something like this.

One word kept popping up in my notes: bittersweet. And in checking around on the Internet a bit, I saw that I'm not the only one who thought that way – on the one hand, nice to see that I got the same read on the book as many/most. On the other hand, it would've been nice to have an insight all to myself. Whether it was in the flashbacks, or the contemporary plot – none of the successes where wholly positive, there was always something wistful about it. Very few of the losses were without some measure of victory, either, it should be said. But the measures were typically small. There's a lot of missed opportunities – years' worth – a lot of regret and sadness over them, especially the ones that can't be recreated.

The other novels I mentioned earlier all share a thread with YOU about friendship – particularly that kind of friendship that develops early in life, the kind that continues through the years, and really shapes your future: your personality, loyalties, loves – for good or ill. How in many cases your adult life is a reaction to, or development of, these friendships. And that's where Grossman is his sweetest, and probably his woeful.

That's not to say this is a depressing book – there's a lot of fun, there's a challenge, there's personal growth, and an element of hope throughout. The protagonist, Russell, finds his roots, finds comfort and a place to grow. Other characters do, too. There's a sense of history being made here, looking at the rise of FPS games, the early days of E3, remembering the first computers introduced in public schools and the general lack of ability of the faculty to know what to do with them. The nostalgia factor, for even people like me that were on the fringes of this culture is high. I'm not much of a gamer (though I'd like to be – just don't have the time), but the game – or the series of games – is as incredible as it is impossible (especially given the technology available at the time, but I think even if the first installment came out now, it'd be impossible.) I'd play this – or I'd watch my 15 year-old son play it/obsess over it.

There are little observations and asides sprinkled throughout the text that add so much personality and flavor to the narrative – like this in the middle of this paragraph:

After ten weeks of work, we could play out an altercation between an eighteenth-century French mercenary with a short sword and buckler (a saucer-size shield with a pointed spike – as Eskimo language is to snow, so archaic English is to “metal objects designed to cause harm”) and a Roman legionnaire from the age of Marius, with his gladius, Vae victis!

The characters annoyed me so much, especially Russell. The book itself was solidly written at times, but at others felt bloated. The story is aimless and I didn't realize what the book was even about until I finished. It started as one thing, changed to another, and changed again.

It was just mediocre and a lot of it outright annoyed me. Some parts entertained me, and I thought that maybe it would get better. But then it just kept... I don't know. It kept being itself.

For a moment there, this book fooled me. The premise was captivating and I can hardly resist a story which uses video games and their industry as a background.

The writing is often confusing and convoluted especially in some of the transitions. The only time where the text flowed was when the author went on a description rampage. About that...

This is where we can notice the author background working in the video game industry. He really knows how to describe all the scenarios and character equipment. However, they do not appear to contribute much to the overall history of the book. I've often thought of them as notes in a game development document or as side notes in a theater piece where you need to address all the items in the scenario. I love world setting and descriptions but these just felt boring and unnecessary.

Of course, only the writer can know what he was trying to pass along with his story, but I honestly feel that the story conclusion and moral as it is could be easily accomplishable with less 100-150 pages than what the book has.

For example the complete section about Solar Empires is so unnecessary. Did he really need to explain what happened in-ALL-THE-GAMES... Basically, these games were used only as a plot device to, in the end, come back to the Endorian continent again.

In these almost 400 pages, I couldn't find real character development, the introverted genius died as an introverted genius. The charismatic/successful character remained as so. The smart/misunderstood one didn't even made an effort. Finally, the ordinary/”imaginative” one that seems to have a dinner for two with an imaginary character in a restaurant (just, how did this happen? Nobody at the restaurant thought it was weird?), just kept being so.

I kept reading in expectation for a good ending and sadly, in this chapter the book also falls short. It just goes the philosophical route in a paragraph or two offering a cliché and very very anticlimactic ending.

For example, what happened after the game was released? We know that WAFFLE became shareware and Black Arts was shut down, but for a book that gave almost as much focus to Mournblade as it gave to the game release pipeline, it's odd that we don't get any real metrics in the game release.

I guess that what I really take from the book were the parts of the story that reflected more in the day to day job of a video game company and the hacker/do it yourself culture that spawns from the characters since they were kids.

People looking for a Ready Player One experience, won't find it in this book. It riffs many times on nostalgia, but the story and the writing are hardly on par from what we've seen from Ernest Cline.

I have mentioned before that I enjoy playing video games, but I'm rather specific about which kinds of video games I like to play. I've tried a lot genres since I got my first gaming console (a first-generation GameBoy), but of all the genres available, I've always been drawn to RPGs, especially when I got a PlayStation 1 and started playing Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy VII. Though many video game RPGs are notable because of their graphics, what drew me to them was not so much the graphics as the stories they told. As a lifelong reader, books were able to provide me with new worlds to immerse myself in, albeit I could not interact with them in any deeper way. RPGs, on the other hand, were like books in that they had a deeper storyline than the average platformer, but with the added bonus that now, via the player character, I could actually interact with the world of the story, live in it in a way that a book or even a movie could not let me do. Sure, many RPGs operate on a very specific storyline still, and do not really allow the player to go hieing off on their own to do whatever they please, but still, it was better than having no control at all.

In recent years, increasingly advanced technology and more creative game producers have allowed for a variety of options that are not as limiting as the games that I used to play on my PS1 (or even on my PlayStation 2, for that matter). The “open world” format (wherein the player is free to roam almost wherever they want) is now very popular, reaching its current peak with Bethesda's Elder Scrolls: Skyrim and Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed games. BioWare plays with the concept of a “romance option,” giving the player the choice of a handful of characters with whom the player character could pursue a romantic relationship based on certain dialogue and gameplay choices made throughout the game (this is most prominent in their Dragon Age and Mass Effect series). Now, more than ever, video game producers are going for a more cinematic look and story line, while at the same time attempting to give the player as many options as are reasonably possible to make the game more personal, so said player may become more emotionally invested.

But an interesting question is: what goes into making such games?What needs to be done in order to make a game in the first place, especially an RPG, which involves not just art and programming, but storytelling, too? YOU by Austin Grossman is an attempt to answer not just that question, but also why it is we play - and love - RPGs in the first place.

YOU begins with the narrator, Russell, who is looking for a job with Black Arts Studios, a video game company that's on the edge of falling apart just after one of its founders, Simon (who is also an old friend of Russell's) dies. He's hired as a game designer for Black Arts' upcoming release: the latest game in the company's fantasy RPG series Realms of Gold. Russell reminisces on his friendship with not just Simon, but also Darren, Black Arts' other founder, and Lisa, Black Arts' chief programmer and the best after Simon himself, and in between he plays through Black Arts' entire game catalogue, including the very earliest version of Realms of Gold, designed by Simon when they were all still in high school. But there's still that game that needs to be finished, and Russell has to see to that, too. All of these plotlines intertwine and connect, oftentimes n the most unexpected ways, to tell a story about not just how a video game gets made, but how special they can become.

Some time before I started reading the novel, Hope told me that Austin Grossman and Lev Grossman (author of The Magicians series) are actually twin brothers. Now, there's a lot that's been said about twins, about how they're actually very similar, but in their case, this is actually quite true, as reading the beginning of YOU feels like reading The Magicians. It's probably unfair, not to mention likely incorrect, to compare the works of two authors - in different genres, no less - to each other because they're twins, but I cannot help but notice similarities. Russell feels a great deal like Quentin Coldwater, with shades of Josh. From what the reader sees of him, Simon, too, seemed to showcase some of Quentin and Josh's traits, but with Alice's genius. Lisa is almost dead-on for Julia, with some shades of Janet. Darren reminds me of Eliot with some shades of Penny.

Even the general themes are similar: The Magicians series is about a disaffected young man who learns he is magical and finds companionship amongst others like him, who are all equally disaffected and have to cope with that. YOU is about a disaffected man who remembers and misses the magical days of his youth, when he and his friends believed they could do anything, and tries to get some of that magic back. Lev Grossman's series and Austin Grossman's novel are held together by deep threads about the complex nature of friendship, growing up, and love - love for others, of course, but more love for what one does.

Another thematic thread that both The Magicians and YOU have in common: the desire to escape from one's current state of life. I have already made my sentiments regarding Quentin's own thoughts on his brand of escapism known: I do not like what he does, though I understand the motivation behind his actions. Russell, on the other hand, expresses a similar reasoning as Quentin when he explains why RPG players love to play the games they do, and yet I accept his reasoning wholeheartedly, compared to embracing Quentin's actions. I suppose it has much to do with responsibility: video games do not let one escape responsibility, or at least they do not cause any lasting harm to the people around oneself. The same cannot be said of Quentin's actions. Again, however, I suppose it is incorrect to draw these comparisons, given how Lev Grossman's series and Austin Grossman's novel are in two completely different genres, and yet the similarities remain, and to me, as a reader of both authors' works, somewhat inescapable.

What I do find unique about YOU, though, are its narrative style and the plot that lies at the heart of the novel: making a video game. As a player of video games with a very wide creative streak I have always wondered what it would be like to actually make one. I have often believed that I am capable of coming up with decent world-building, characters, and plots, and though I do not have the necessary art and programming skills, if I were to work with a reputable team I might be able to produce a satisfactory product. After reading YOU, however, I'm quite sure that I might not be able to do much at all except perhaps as a consultant for world-building and character creation. Having worked on such games as Deus Ex, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Tomb Raiber: Legends, and most recently the superb Dishonored, Austin Grossman certainly knows what he's talking about, and he's not shy about showing the reader what goes on behind the scenes when a video game is made - and it is not pretty or easy. It's unfortunate that the reader is not given a more concrete picture of what goes on in a video game company in the midst of production beyond the hints that it is an utterly exhausting business, since those glimpses are overshadowed by other things (mainly Russell's stories about the past and his narration of the games he's playing), but what is there is interesting, and rather terrifying to anyone who's ever aspired to start their own video game company, or work for one.

A problem that a lot of reviewers appear to have with this novel is its narrative style. I will admit, it is not the easiest thing to follow: it starts out in first-person point-of-view, but gradually slides into second-person whenever Russell plays a game. It gets even more confusing when Russell uses “you” in his first-person narratives the way one would in casual conversation. and jumps back and forth between the past and the present. There is also no clear delineation between real-life narratives and video-game narratives; the reader has to guess for himself or herself based on context clues. This means, of course, that it's very easy to get turned around in the narration, to slip and slide between reality and video game and work grind and retelling of past events - and I have to say, I rather like it that way. To be sure, figuring out where one is in the timeline, or even in which reality one is, can be challenging, but I do think that it reflects, to a degree, the ennui Russell feels about his life, about being twenty-eight and feeling as if he's going nowhere, accomplishing nothing, because nothing makes him happy, he does not feel as if he's found his place.

Overall, YOU is the novel I did not expect to find: a novel about video games that I could almost totally relate to. Ready Player One was not that bad a read, but it wasn't quite something I could completely relate to, either, being as it was about eighties arcade games. YOU, however, is about RPGs: the genre I play the most, and the genre I love the most. However, it isn't just about video games, or about video game players, or even the making of video games (though it does have quite a lot about that, too). When Russell realizes that adulthood is whatever he - us - want it to be, he essentially summarizes what this novel is about. It's about growing up, and finding one's place in the world, and the desire all of us have to find that perfect place for ourselves - a place where we can be exactly who we wish to be.

Kind of neat, but not without problems. The setting - guys who become computer game developers growing up in 1980s, then diving into the industry in 1990s - is nice and the description of the computer game world is interesting and the games they created were kind of cool. The characters were fine, maybe, if a bit stereotypical, and the plot was non-existential for a while and kind of forced in the end. The book was a long-winded; more compact and to-the-point writing could've earnt a fourth star.

There were technical annoyances. At one point, the protagonist uses PC commands to start a C64 game. No, it doesn't work like that. Of course the games they create and play are wildly fabulous and way larger than life, and that's kind of boring – reading about someone playing a game of your dreams is not quite the same as playing it.

And come on - how come the book doesn't mention Nethack once, when clearly large part of the Black Arts games is just Nethack? Leaving Nethack unmentioned in the final listing of games is simply wrong.

But despite these flaws, I did care enough to read the book. It's by far no masterpiece, but someone interested in computer games – particularly those derived from roleplaying games – might find this interesting. Particularly if you're a white male.