Economist Article on Changing the Game

My book won’t be in stores for another two months, and we’ve already gotten our first bit of press — from the Economist, no less. 🙂

Obviously, I’m pretty excited to see (and nervous about) public reaction to the book! The Economist’s article confirms a suspicion I’ve had for a long time now — that most reviewers and journalists will choose to focus on a few specific slices of it, rather than attempt to expose the full scope of the book to their audience. For example, The Economist article focuses mainly on a reference to advergames, boosting productivity with games, and community building — which together represent far less than even a third of the major topics covered by the book. See the outline, below:

PART I: INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1: An Introduction to Games, and Why They Matter

PART II: GAMES AND CUSTOMERS
Chapter 2: Advertising “In” and “Around” Games
Chapter 3: Advergames
Chapter 4: Adverworlds, Second Life, and Blurred Reality

PART III: GAMES AND EMPLOYEES
Chapter 5: Better Employees through Gaming (i.e. using games to train employees)
Chapter 6: Three Skills for an Interconnected World
Chapter 7: The Talent Game (i.e. using games to recruit employees)

PART IV: GAMES AND THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS
Chapter 8: Games for Work, Games at Work (i.e. using games to improve productivity)
Chapter 9: Innovating through Communities
Chapter 10: Why Gamers are Better than Computers, Scientists, and Governments (i.e. using games to solve hard problems)

Most books attempt to showcase one big idea, but Ethan and I (for better or worse) attempted to explore several big ideas that share one common attribute — a relationship to games. Hopefully, we made the right decision…

BTW, if you read the Economist article and enjoy it, I’d appreciate you voicing your support by clicking the “Recommended” link at the top right of the page.