Every time two players begin a Game, the form of the competition is unknown, to be determined by the players themselves. The series focuses on the character Stile, a Citizen of Proton who discovers Phaze and travels back and forth between the two worlds / realities, has adventures, etc.Īnyhow, on Proton, societal status is based on your ranking in The Game, sort of a cross between the Holodeck and a Gameboy. Anthony offers what I think is a fascinating vision of the future of game competition, and game generation I could imagine attempting to create a video game version of this.įirst, some backstory: the Apprentice Adept series takes place in two worlds, the technology-based planet of Proton, and the parallel universe of Phaze, a land based on magic and fantasy. I read these books as a 10 or 11-year old kid (as well as Xanth, etc.), and I still think about them once in a while, particularly The Game. Maybe I’m the first perhaps there are few game scholars old enough to have read Anthony? :-0

From what I can tell via Google, in the context of game studies and game design, no one has yet written about The Game from the Apprentice Adept novels. Thanks to past GTxA hosts: the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts and the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture.įor quite some time now I’ve been waiting for some astute game scholar somewhere to analyze Piers Anthony’s most excellent Apprentice Adept sci-fi/fantasy series from the early 1980’s, the first book being Split Infinity.

Split infinity book