YOU is a contemplative and finely crafted novel where every page bleeds with love for the medium and old acquaintances.
Russell and his childhood friends Darren, Lisa and Simon were four very different kids brought together by a love of roleplaying games and programming. While his friends went on to form one of the most successful gaming companies in the industry, Russell instead spent his post-degree life drifting through various unfulfilling jobs. 1994 rolls along, and he finds himself winding up with a job at the aforementioned company, Black Arts, but things are not as they should be. Simon has died, leaving behind unfathomable code; Darren seems more obsessed with his image than creating; Lisa has retreated into her own world of programming; and to top it all off, the company has a huge bug in the engine that runs all of their products.
The book is mainly narrated from Russell’s point of view, as he struggles to fix the rot in the company, reunite his friends and deal with the rather worrying phenomenon of his fictional characters trying to engage him in conversation. Interspersed at regular intervals are flashbacks to their formative years at school playing and writing D&D, a chronological rundown of their games and entertaining pseudo-advertising copy. This mixed-media approach helps break down the walls between what’s in the game, what’s happened in the past and what is either a dream or a stress-induced break from reality. For a book that is concerned with characters trying to create the ultimate and most realistic game, this liberal blending helps the concept, and the idea of solving problems and working your way up through successive levels will be a familiar trope to videogame enthusiasts.
While it wears its nostalgia on its sleeve in some of the same ways, it’s not a runaway action homage like Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One; but more of a slow-burning character study and an evocative and literary look at early nineties video games. It certainly takes some aspects of company interactions from real life, with Simon and Darren in particular standing in as proxies for the feuding Doom creators John Carmack and John Romero. Writing for some of gaming’s most influential titles like Ultima Underworld II, Deus Ex, and System Shock has obviously given Grossman some insider knowledge and he uses this to full effect as he details the various stages and pitfalls production face.
I found it totally absorbing, and it left me with a warm glow and a desire to ring up some of my school friends with whom I haven’t spoken in a while. While I think the main themes will resonate deeply with most readers, how much you’ll get out of it will probably come down to how you misspent your youth. If you spent it playing adventure games like Monkey Island or hanging out with your friends writing the backstories for imaginary worlds, you will probably find yourself recommending this to as many people as possible, as I myself have.
