Gamelife

the long version

Video games began to obsess Clune when he was seven. They began to worm into his head and change his sense of reality. This is his memoir of a childhood transformed by technology. Afternoons spent gazing at pixelated maps and mazes trained eyes for the uncanny side of 1980s suburban Illinois. A game about pirates yields clues to the drama of cafeteria politics and locker-room hazing. And in the year of his parents' divorce, a spaceflight simulator opens a hole in reality.