A dark comedy about serious gamers battling real-life, fascinating documentaries about how video games are made, and some fiction that shows us how revolutionary games can be. Here’s a whole lot of video game magic, as told through TV, audiobooks, podcasts, and documentaries I’ve loved.
Dead Pixels (E4)
This show is one of the most perfect comedies ever. Its humor won’t appeal to everybody but if it’s your vibe, it;s everything. It features the everyday lives of two serious gamers, plus the friends they make online and the people they’re forced to interact with offline. It. Is. Perfection.
The opening. It’s British and
High Score (Netflix)
High Score is a fascinating, fun look at the people who built the gaming world. From the creators of iconic arcade games, to the development of handheld consoles and the business ups and downs that the journey took… This was something my whole family enjoyed, and none of us are gamers of any kind.
Don’t Read The Comments by Eric Smith (Goodreads)
This is a delightful YA read, written by the wholesome and very lovely Eric Smith of the Hey YA podcast. It’s filled with his love for Philadelphia, featuring two teenagers of colour who love gaming and have two very different, very interesting careers in gaming. It’s just wonderful. I reviewed it for Love in Panels, which you can read here:
SLAY by Brittany Morris (Goodreads)
SLAY is kind of a dream, even more so if you’re a black girl who games. Brittany Morris has created a world where Nubian is king, and every aspect of our blackness is magnificent and valuable, and where Kiera embraces and showcases all that is being Black and totally slays. The audiobook is fantastic, I super recommend.
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schreier (Goodreads)
Listening to this audiobook made me laugh and it made me cry. Again, I am not a gamer, but the world where hundreds of people (and sometimes just one person all on his own) spend hours upon hours creating an entire world for other people to enjoy… It’s Woah to me. Blood, Sweat and Pixels covers the adventures behind many different games, and also tells a great amount of the heart-filled lessons in entrepreneurship.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (Goodreads)
I knew nothing about gaming and nothing about the 80s when I first read this book, and yet it gripped me in a way that no other book had before. I dove head-first into the Oasis and allll that it was uncovered as the story progressed. This is fun, adventure, rebellion, anti-corporation, human-spirit collaboration, teamwork, film and music references galore, sci-fi wonderland of tech and new perspectives on timeless troubles. It’s! So! Awesome.
Ready Player One
Man, I was nervous and beyond thrilled about this big screen adaption -and seeing it on screen WAS INCREDIBLE. It’s a fantastic adaption, with visuals exactly as I had hoped. This film still makes me turn into that emoji with the stars for eyes whenever I watch it.
Fe@rless_ (Netflix)
The best part of this film is the unmistakeable, inextricable essence of Blackness. It’s fantastic! Not just the way they’ve rendered black hair, and given it a killer soundtrack, and represented a wonderful excellent example of a Black father, but in the tiniest moments -inside jokes, offhand comments… It’s also a super fun, intergalactic space aliens adventure with adorable superhero babies and Yara Shahidi!
