Introduction: Nobody asked for a toaster critic -- The squalid grace of Flappy Bird -- A portrait of the artist as a game studio -- The Blue Shell is everything that's wrong with America -- Little Black Sambo, I'm going to eat you up! -- Can a gobbler have it all? -- Racketeer sports -- The haute couture of videogames -- Can the other come out and play? -- A way of looking -- Free speech is not a marketing plan -- Shaking the Holocaust train -- The long shot -- Puzzling the sublime -- Work is the best place to goof off -- A trio of artisanal reviews -- What is a sports videogame? -- The agony of mastery -- The abyss between the human and the alpine -- Word games last forever -- Perpetual adolescence -- Conclusion: Anything but games.