About this item
As video games evolve, only the fittest companies survive. Making a blockbuster once cost millions of dollars; now it can cost hundreds of millions, but with a $160 billion market worldwide, the biggest players are willing to bet the bank.Steven L. Kent has been playing video games since Pong and writing about the industry since the Nintendo Entertainment System. In volume 1 of The Ultimate History of Video Games, he chronicled the industry's first thirty years. In volume 2, he narrates gaming's entrance into the twenty-first century, as Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft battle to capture the global market.The home console boom of the '90s turned hobby companies like Nintendo and Sega into Hollywood-studio-sized business titans. But by the end of the decade, they would face new, more powerful competitors.
About the Author
Steven L. Kent has published several books dealing with video and computer games as well as a series of military science fiction novels about a Marine named Wayson Harris.Born in California and raised in Hawaii, Kent served as a missionary for the LDS Church between the years of 1979 and 1981. During that time, he worked as a Spanish-speaking missionary serving migrant farm workers in southern Idaho.While Kent earned a Bachelor's degree in journalism and a master's degree in communications from Brigham Young University, he claims that his most important education came from life. Many of the lessons he learned from the Mexican field workers in Idaho have appeared in his stories. Later, from 1986 through 1988, Kent worked as a telemarketer selling TV Guide and Inc. Magazine. His years on the phone helped him develop an ear for speech patterns that has been well-reflected in dialog in his stories.As a boy growing up in Honolulu in the 1960s, Kent developed a unique perspective. He spent hours torch fishing and skin diving. In 1987, Kent reviewed the Stephen King novels Misery and The Eyes of the Dragon for the Seattle Times. A diehard Stephen King fan, Kent later admitted that he pitched the reviews to the Times so that he could afford to buy the books.In 1993, upon returning to Seattle after a five-year absence, Kent pitched a review of 'virtual haunted houses' for the Halloween issue of the Seattle Times. He reviewed the games The Seventh Guest, Alone in the Dark, and Legacy. Not only did this review land Kent three free PC games, it started him on a new career path.By the middle of 1994, when Kent found himself laid off from his job at a PR agency, he became a full-time freelance journalist. He wrote monthly pieces for the Seattle Times along with regular features and reviews for Electronic Games, CD Rom Today, ComputerLife, and NautilusCD. In later years, he would write for American Heritage, Parade, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune and many other publications. He wrote regular columns for MSNBC, Next Generation, the Japan Times, and the Los Angeles Times Syndicate.In 2000, Kent self-published The First Quarter: A 25-year History of Video Games. That book was later purchased and re-published as The Ultimate History of Video Games by the Prima, Three River Press, and Crown divisions of Random House.During his career as a games journalist, Kent wrote the entries on video games for Encarta and the Encyclopedia Americana. At the invitation of Senator Joseph Lieberman, Kent has spoken at the annual Report Card on Video Game Violence in Washington D.C.In 2005, Kent announced his semi-retirement from video games so that he could concentrate on writing novels. Though he still writes a monthly column for Boy's Life, he has mostly concentrated his efforts on writing novels since that time. His first efforts in science fiction, The Clone Republic and Rogue Clone were published by Ace Book in 2006. Despite his "retire
