Austin Grossman has been part of the development of several iconic video games dating back to the early nineties. His new book YOU is the story of a 28 year old man named Russell who's returning to his hometown to work for a game development company, started by his closest high school friends, after spending most of his twenties trying to distance himself from the hobbies and friends of his youth in pursuit of a normal adult life. YOU is an effective condemnation of that idea and a wonderful exploration of the importance of the friendship, art, and video games.
Russell is quickly promoted into a prominent position after the tumultuous exit of the studio's president along with his favorite employees. Russell and the rest of the remaining team must design the next game in a series that they started in high school. A bug is found in the code programmed by now-deceased obsessive genius Simon. Russell must play through each of the previous games in the series to find and eradicate it, all while helping to build the next game in the time allotted by corporate masters.
In doing so, Russell must confront the life he missed out on. Reality and fantasy bleed together as he traverses the fantasy and science fiction worlds created by friends he left behind.
YOU is frequently funny and contains plenty of insight into the world of video game creation. Despite talk of programming and code and other things foreign to anyone outside of the world of video games, YOU is never alienating or gets held back by technical details. Rather, these are necessary touchstones that must be included to make the story feel authentic so we can be immersed in a fictional world that never stops moving.
Grossman, in describing the Black Arts games, has also created their worlds and lore, but the strength of YOU isn't in how detailed these worlds are, it's in how seamlessly these interconnected virtual worlds interconnect with that of the people who made them.
What starts as a story about a guy reaching out for meaning, for some direction to pull himself out of depression; turns into a journey through his past choices and relationships, as he struggles with the idea that maybe these fantasy worlds have some honest adult value. Whatever that means.
Editor's note: Cody Steffen is a book seller at Lift Bridge Book Shop, 45 Main Street, Brockport, NY. You is available at Lift Bridge.
The Brockporter Book Of The Week is a regular feature of the Brockporter Online News Magazine which appears most Fridays. If you have a book review you would like to share with Brockporter readers, please send it to davidgmarkham@gmail.com.
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