Video game scholarship is growing up and moving out of the basement, thanks in part to the growing body of work analyzing video games, researching the historical roots of electronic games, and studying gaming culture. The Encyclopedia of Video Games begins to fill a gap in reference material, providing selective coverage of systems, key figures, and other content associated with this pastime in short (generally two to four pages) entries.

Many entries provide surprisingly detailed historical information on topics such as hacking, tracing its evolution in popular culture through films, books, and in the context of gaming. Casual browsers or student researchers will enjoy the stories of the origins and legacies of arcade staples like the iconic Pac-Man, while the connection between Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain may surprise. An effort is made to go beyond the major video game markets by including information on emerging markets in South America and Africa.

Company histories of game makers and systems such as Sega, Nintendo, Atari, and Electronic Arts (EA) collect knowledge of industry people and events in one title; the entries are not organized similarly, though, so comparisons between companies’ marketing strategies, for example, cannot be made. The tone of the entries ranges from philosophical to scholarly to fact-based to informal, with references to further readings in journal articles and on websites. The style of the entries reflects the interests of the contributors. In fact, a secondary use of the set would be to identify researchers and developers of video games from the list of contributors.

Currency in print reference for technology-related topics is difficult to maintain, and possibly explains the encyclopedia’s focus on established games, companies, and the history of games and gaming while skimming over more recent developments. Rather than attempting to cover all video games in the encyclopedia, representative game titles illustrate genres. Zynga’s Farmville, for example, rates an entry, while other popular social games played through Facebook are excluded, as is mention of Facebook’s role as a delivery platform.

I am not aware of other encyclopedias on video games, although there are related popular and scholarly titles on different combinations of video games, art, technology, and culture. The encyclopedia complements and updates such available works, including Steven L. Kent’s The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon (Three Rivers Press, 2001) and the Encyclopedia of Video Games editor’s own Video Game Explosion (Greenwood, 2007). Public, school, and academic libraries with gaming groups, programs in video game design and development, or students with interest in researching games may enjoy this title.