http://culture.vg/reviews/videogame-art/kick-off.html
Would anyone like to try and summarize the answer for us, bullet-point style? (trying to keep the length of each bullet point down to a single sentence, if possible).
I long debated whether to make that essay into a theory article, and put it in the VGCULTURE books, or whether to make it a Kick Off review and put it in the VGART ones, and finally decided on the latter because I would otherwise have had almost nothing to say in the Kick Off review that I would have to write. And the same can be said also for quite a few other subjects (e.g. reversibility in the SimCity review, immersion & control in the Diablo review, highly competitive play in the Quake, StarCraft and Counter-Strike reviews, etc. etc.) So what this means essentially is that the VGART books will be just as necessary as the VGCULTURE ones, in the long run, if you want to have a complete understanding of my videogame theory -- and that's just how I like it. These are simply subjects which are more easily tackled by going in depth in specific examples instead of abstract theorizing (as in, e.g., Basic Instincts or The Simulacrum Is True), or bringing in great numbers of examples that are only touched upon fleetingly (as in, e.g., Arcade Culture or On Role-Playing Games). And while, as I've already explained, I could certainly have presented these essays as pure theory, I think it's better if they double as reviews, with the understanding that the theory they contain needs to be taken as seriously as all the other theory I've written. And though I probably will not be expanding on any of these subjects in their own theory essays, I WILL be taking the points I made in them as given for the purpose of future theory essays (and more specifically, the ones contained in VGCULTURE II).