Over thousands of years of human evolution and technological innovation, there are a few pieces of humanity that persevere through the ages: the love of a good meal, the appreciation of beauty, and the need to tell stories. Stories in particular are interesting in the way they’ve evolved alongside us. From ancient oral traditions to today’s TikTok videos, stories are foundational in the grand architecture that is culture. No matter where you are on the globe, no matter what language you speak, stories and their lessons persist. No one is immune to the allure of a good story.

The ways we tell stories today vary in more ways than have ever been possible before. New technologies constantly emerge, creating new avenues for engaging with narratives. As to be expected, many cling to the older, more established ways of storytelling– books, movies, plays, music, etc. But we’d be remiss to completely cast aside the “young” methods of storytelling, those that are just starting to walk on their own two feet. Inside these newer narrative forms may be potential that we’ve yet to recognize. For instance? Videogames*.

I know videogames aren’t new by any stretch of the imagination, but in terms of other storytelling methods like the written word or oral tradition, the format is still “young”. Especially as, for the first decade or so of videogames, it would be hard to argue for them as storytelling mediums. There is no grand lore behind Pong. Pac-Man, while it has a “story” is simply a goal to give some sort of stakes to the dots on the screen. Even as games came out of arcade cabinets and into our homes, a select few could be considered story-driven.

But as technology evolved, so did the capabilities of games. Not every game is a Doom-style shooter or the style of game my dad describes as, “running around and collecting shit” (think Spyro or Banjo Kazooie). The moment games had a chance to tell nuanced, real stories, they did. And now, with the proliferation of gaming consoles and the aging demographic of those who’ve grown up gaming, these triumphs of storytelling are starting to get recognition.

Still, even as narrative-heavy games like The Last of Us get the HBO miniseries treatment and shorter indie titles like Undertale and What Remains of Edith Finch enter the “Best Games of All Time” lists, a good portion of the population don’t see the inherent value in videogames as an art form. That’s why, when I was recommended a book that promised to take videogames, their creation, and their cultural impact seriously, I jumped on it– Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow was added to this year’s Book List.

Spanning the course of 30 years, Zevin’s Tomorrow follows the lives of two friends, Sadie and Sam, as they journey from playing to making games together. Through in-depth character study and interaction, the author explores how games facilitate cooperation and connection through play and how the ways we interact in games can affect the world around us. While videogames ground the novel in time and conflict, Zevin puts a spotlight on the act of creation and the relationships formed in the process of constructing collaborative art.

Because, as Zevin argues, videogames are art. With Sadie and Sam guiding our way through the conceptualization and development of a game, the reader is given a clear picture of the thought and passion that go into what we see on the screen. The art style, the music, the movement, the gameplay– all of it informs on the story the videogame is trying to tell, the message it’s trying to send. A good videogame developer takes all these into account, just as a good author takes into account pacing or word choice, when doing the hard work of creation. While Zevin skips over large sections of actual game development processes, she shows the reader enough for even the non-game enthusiast to see the inherent narrative and artistic value videogames can have. To bolster her point, Zevin drops several period-appropriate titles that often relate to the current progression of the plot, indicating either serious research or a deep love of games on the author’s part. These small mentions, even when brief, felt like tiny love letters to both the history of games and the gaming community.

Those small nods, though, were part of a larger problem I found with the prose. Throughout the book, Zevin explains videogame vernacular to the reader, stopping scene progression to explain the basic plot of a foundational videogame or what the acronym “NPC” means. This is fine on its own– I understand the need to generalize and simplify to reach a wider audience– but it often comes into conflict with itself. On one page, Zevin is explaining how game engines work so a point of conflict can be understood. On the next page, there’s a conversation between two characters about Metal Gear Solid, which doesn’t get the narrative weight it deserves if you’re not familiar with the game and its history. It’s jarring to have Zevin flip-flop back and forth between industry-specific language and dumbed-down explanations, and it happens throughout the entirety of the book. I have a hard time deciding if this is an issue with an editor trying to prune videogame jargon or with Zevin’s writing itself. Other issues with prose, such as the strange, unnatural dialogue of young characters (what 11-year-old says, “This being the world, everyone’s dying”?), makes me wonder if it isn’t a little bit of both.

Awkward phrasing and confused audience aside, the foundation of Tomorrow is solid. The characters Zevin creates in the first half of the book are engaging enough to keep the reader invested in their imperfect fumbling toward their goals and relationships. Several themes are brought up that I was eager to see fleshed out: sexism in the videogame industry, cultural appropriation in American-made games, classism issues revolving around racism, antisemitism, and disability. These were concepts and ideas I’ve had discussions about with friends, debates I’ve read in videogame publications. To have them represented in uncomfortably accurate ways in a book felt validating like the problems in the game industry are worth the time and effort to think about. Unfortunately, by the second act, it all seemed to be falling apart.

About halfway into the book, I realized that once the characters had crossed their first major hurdle, I didn’t know where the book was going to go next. Based on the structure of the following two hundred pages, I don’t know if the author did, either. The second act stalled, the characters and plot spinning in circles, before being pulled into the third act by such a jarring violent event that I was amazed there had been no foreshadowing or immediate follow-up. But that unexpected third-act transition and its lack of thematic weight gave me all the information I needed to know: Zevin wouldn’t be expanding on any of the concepts I’d been so excited to see in the first half of the novel. Instead, in what seemed like forced “growth”, the characters actively disregard and play down their struggles in the last few pages, making all the ideas presented in the beginning feel like footnotes.

Only once I finished the novel did I see what Zevin had intended to do. In the style of Sally Rooney (Conversations with Friends, Normal People), she intended for the book not to be about the plot but about the relationship between the two characters. While I can see the intent, I don’t see the execution. Some combination of the awkward prose, the stand-still plot, and a fraught connection between the two main characters who stoop to being cruel to one another made this book and its ending incredibly disappointing. I can appreciate the idea of the book– Zevin had something here– but an idea isn’t enough to carry a book that, in my opinion, struggled to form any kind of cohesion or distinct identity.

I know I’m in the minority with these opinions. Tomorrow has been praised to high heaven and back, both by literary review publications and gaming journalists; there is an argument to be made that modern character novels like Tomorrow, Americanah, and Conversations with Friends just aren’t for me. While I won’t be recommending Tomorrow, especially not to my gaming friends, I can’t say that there isn’t any value in a book that takes such a firm stance on videogames and the unique, ever-expanding way in which they communicate stories.

That said, I’m more likely to start another playthrough of Journey or Mass Effect than I am to read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow again. Some stories resonate in their respective mediums more than others. Until next month friends, happy reading (or gaming), and happy sipping!

* Videogame vs. Video Game Spelling: I know. This debate is everywhere. The dictionary uses the split version, "video game", but many in the community and industry journalism use the compound, "videogame". Personally, I'm preferential to the compound, even if the book and reviewers aren't.