[geek][random] Okay, that's weird...

My 3-star review of Developing Serious Games was deleted from Amazon. WTF? The only review that's there now is a 5-star review by someone who has no other reviews, and who clearly hasn't read the friggin' book... Grrr... Update: I posted another (3-star) review, titled "Okay, but not great":

I had high hopes for this book, as I work for a small software company that is teetering on the brink of becoming a producer of 'serious games'. Unfortunately, this book failed to meet my expectations. The book is a good overview of the contemporary state of the field. It touches upon games development in general, best practices for software development, ditto for game development; it covers dev tools, platforms & engines; it covers art and sound resources. It discusses funding sources, and the differences between 'entertainment games' and 'serious games'. There is also a good history of 'serious games', starting with the earliest military flight simulators and ending with current releases for, among other platforms, the iPod. In short, it covers everything. And, as such, it covers nothing in particular in much depth. Apart from the history, there really isn't anything in this book that probably can't be gleaned from spending time on Gamasutra.com, gamedev.net, or igda.org. I also found some of the editing to be sloppy. The writing is quite strong, but the proofreading left a bit to be desired: "a" for "an", "fist" for "first". There may not have been a lot of these typos, but the ones I noticed were quite jarring. If you're looking for a 50,000-ft view of the field, this book will probably suffice. If you're looking for an intensely geeky dev-oriented book, you will probably be left wanting more. Don't get me wrong - there are some great things in this book for a developer, such as the appendices with their snapshots of tools and concepts. It is also a great 'all-in-one-place' resource. But I'm not sure if this book will stay on my shelf of 'keepers'; we'll see.

Let's see if this one gets deleted as well...