Expressive Processing has the perfect combination of technical expertise, historical rigor, and dogged determination to get inside of the black box to make it a kind of primer on what Henry Lowood once called 'the hard work of software history.' It is, therefore, a model of a new critical approach. This is a must read for anyone working in fields such as new media, game studies, software studies, and AI. Because Wardrip-Fruin writes so confidently and clearly about complex systems, this will be a powerfully enabling book for graduate students, and advanced undergraduates as well.
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, Associate Professor of English, University of Maryland, author of Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination
At last, an analysis by somebody who truly 'gets it!' We have seen plenty of first-generation books on interactive entertainment, in which an author with expertise in another field presents a bystander's perceptions on the subject. But this is a second-generation book, written by an author whose background is entirely within the field. Wardrip-Fruin was brought up on computer games and educated in the thoughts of the first generation thinkers. Now he has integrated them into a new perspective that builds on those ideas at higher levels of abstraction. Looking back at my own ideas from Noah's new vantage point was an educational experience for me.
Chris Crawford, former head of Atari's Games Research Group, and co-founder of Storytron
The perfect volume to begin the new publication series in software studies.... Inspiring.
Game Studies
I highly recommend this book to digital media—games, movies, and fiction—creators, AI students, and engineers.
Computing Reviews
In Wardrip-Fruin's Expressive Processing, the field of 'interactive entertainment' comes of age; its theories and methods are native to its medium, rather than borrowed from literature, film, or history....Required reading.
JAC
Through insightful examinations of media ranging from simulations to computer games, the author presents an intriguing and cogent argument.... Recommended.
Choice
Wardrip-Fruin has given us an arsenal of rhetorical firepower and a powerful set of examples for how one might teach algorithmic literacy across the curriculum without delving into the syntax of any particular programming language.
Digital Humanities Quarterly
