Critique

Honestly, when I first started reading this book, I never imagined I would have a lot to say admiring how good this book is. Maybe it is just me, an experienced ESL teacher with a deep love of playing computer games, but I am sure you will see yourself smiling each time you remember to have finished reading this book.

Ryan and Vie had five important binary research questions when they started putting this collection together, bringing writing center scholarship and game studies together. So, I think, although I cannot judge, that not only do they have plenty of answers to their questions but also give their readers a chance to formulate new answers, comparing them with how they first responded to those questions before reading the book; and, that is what I love about Unlimited Players. For example, reading this book helps you realize how beautifully two seemingly disparate fields can relate and add to each other if explored from the proper perspectives. Also, if you, a tutor and/or a director, usually opt for change over repetition, this collection offers tons of new ideas to challenge your boundaries and learn something new. If exploring two disparate fields such as writing and gaming can generate this many new ideas, your many relevant experiences you were thinking about while reading this book can definitely add to one or maybe both of these fields. So, you will be inspired to start doing your study, turning it into the next scientific masterpiece many will admire.

I loved, love, and will love gaming forever; during my childhood, many adults kept telling me how useless playing computer games is, and that I should spend more time studying; today, gaming is a world-famous high-paying profession many wish to have, and no one thinks of it as useless. That is to say, if I could connect with many of the gaming concepts the book explored due to my childhood experiences, you, too, can benefit from filtering whatever the book explores through your diverse background and discover lots of new correlations between you and either writing or game studies.

All in all, although the book could do better in some parts as I discussed in the previous review sections, I still admire the editors’ effort to collect these scientifically cohesive and inspiring articles and highly recommend this book to current, and especially prospective, tutors and writing and composition scholars for many good reasons I shared in this review.