In Overleveled: My Life in Videogames, writer Karen L. Mead looks at her long history of gaming and tries to figure out what’s going on. How do the memories of time spent in imaginary worlds interface with our memories of real places? Is it possible for memories of games to be more genuine in some ways than memories of real locations, and if so, why?
Mead looks at incredibly popular, era-defining games like Super Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy VII and Starcraft among others to see how these games became both a part of her life and an escape from it.
Overleveled is a short memoir about a lifelong addiction to video games. It does not yet have any ratings, because it hasn't received any real promotion yet.
This book started out as a series of blog posts; posts separated by years and platforms, because I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about videogames for over a decade. I experimented with Let’s Plays, stand-alone posts, parody posts and whatever else I could think of. Nothing felt exactly right.
Eventually it occurred to me that I could do things the old-fashioned way and write a book. I’m indebted to Tom Bissel, author of Extra Lives: Why Videogames Matter for basically inventing the personal-narrative-via-videogames subgenre. My version of it is pretty different from Bissel’s, but I doubt this idea ever would have seemed possible to me if he hadn’t done it first.
Why “Overleveled?” Because leveling up has always been my default strategy for progressing through any game where the option of leveling up is available. Rather than taking the time to truly learn the mechanics of a game and progress through honing my skills, I’d rather spend more time making my characters stronger by fighting weak enemies over and over again. Maybe that’s not indicative of anything, and I just enjoy watching spiky-haired protagonists do battle a lot.
Or maybe I’ve been taking the easy way out all this time.
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Greek
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Already translated.
Translated by Stefanos Karampalis
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Author review: Mr. Karampalis was a pleasure to work with; very kind and very professional. I highly recommend him. |
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Lucas Lima
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Silvia Adriana Domingo Puga
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Author review: A pleasure to work with. |
