• The Game

  • The Game Is Life, Book 1
  • By: Terry Schott
  • Narrated by: Luke Daniels
  • Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (2,320 ratings)

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The Game  By  cover art

The Game

By: Terry Schott
Narrated by: Luke Daniels
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Publisher's summary

What if life as we know it was just a game?

What if instead of traditional schools, children learned by participating in a virtual reality simulation, one that allowed them to experience "life" from birth to death - multiple times?

What if one player, on his final play, could change the world forever?

©2015 Terry Schott (P)2016 Podium Publishing

What listeners say about The Game

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A good concept mired by lazy writing.

Any additional comments?


The concept of The Game is a somewhat classic and attractive concept to sci-fi fans; that of a completely immersive VR world akin to that found in The Matrix. It plays with interesting ideas like 'what if life is just a computer simulation', and 'how might society change in response to the development of highly advanced VR'.

In general, the writing style and character development are fairly solid, and the performance is great. But the world-building itself, the most interesting prospect of the book, is executed terribly, and between the lines can be found an anti-atheistic message.

I get the distinct impression that this book was written for teens. Not in that the content itself is targeted towards teens, but rather, that there is an assumption of undeveloped intelligence and a lack of worldly knowledge that the author has used to justify lazy world building.

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To give a few examples (very mild spoilers):

1) We are told that viewing players in the game has replaced all other forms of entertainment (TV, movies, books, video games, etc). The only explanation given is that watching important, extraordinary, or popular people live out their day-to-day lives is obviously better entertainment, which it obviously is not.

2) We are told that time passes at a rate of 1 virtual year per 1 real day. We are also told that it is impossible to record the game. No explanation is given as to why recording is impossible (or how viewings are done), and no explanation as to how viewing is possible, especially given the differing rates of time, and no ability to record (and thus no playing back recorded video at a slower speed).

3) Lastly, we are told, in several pieces, that society has changed to completely revolve around the game. This includes the economy, education, entertainment, and the extreme classism that has since developed. Nearly no details are offered to explain how this came to be, or how society currently functions. There is, in essence, nearly zero actual word-building.

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The book also seems to promote an approach to life that abandons healthy scepticism and rational inquiry. While the protagonists seek out and absorb all that alternative medicine and religious studies have to offer, there's a telling absence of interest in science and evidence-based medicine. There also seems to be the clear message that faith and prayer are positive and effective forces, and that the absence of religion would ruin society.

I've read and enjoyed many fictional books with religion, magic, spirituality, or angels and demons as a central theme, the problem here is the execution; its inclusion seems to be for the purpose of delivering a message, rather than serving the story. I might not have bothered with this point if I weren't convinced that the book is targeted at a younger audience.

In closing, this book was a huge disappointment for me, and I certainly won't be purchasing its sequels. Decerning readers of fantasy and sci-fi should consider looking elsewhere.

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62 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

pulls at the questions at the back of my mind

Not by the synopsis alone. I preordered The Game. From an unknown to me author. With the backing of one of my go-to narrators and a publisher, that does a really good job of picking up extraordinary titles. The summary pulls at the questions at the back of my mind. Why are we here? How did we get here? What is the point of life? Well, what if the point of life was to do your best at it. All the while scoring points in the game called life. Wouldn’t that be something? That is exactly where Zach, the protagonist, finds himself. Albeit with a twist.

Tygon is a world very similar to Earth. Pretty much everything is very similar, technology, corporations, and the media rule. However, the one major difference is this. At a very young age, every child is plugged into “The Game”. Think of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, similar to World of Warcraft. The world where the game takes place is a different planet called Earth. Everyone there is playing the game. Then everyone’s game life is available for the public to watch. If you get more fans and followers, when you come out of The Game you are rewarded with fame and fortune. But only if you have a fan base and can place in the ranking of all of the other players.

The Game follows one such player, Zach, through his “waking up” from a game and starting another instance. We get to follow his game life, from birth to his 40th birthday. Because in the game 1 day on Tygon is 1 year on Earth. This happens pretty quickly. I do not want to give too much away here, so let me say this. What if while in The Game you found a book that you wrote in your last game, and have no memory of writing, explaining that life is just a game. Along with that, what if you started to tell people this and they believed you?

Schott’s idea here is so perfectly epic. Yet so simple as well. Written in a way that makes sense to me. I was engrossed from beginning to end. Not wanting to stop listening for anything. I had to know what happened next.

WARING: There is a cliffhanger ending. Followed with a brief sample of the next book in the series that cannot be published soon enough.

Luke Daniels delivered this performance just as soundly as most of the rest that I have heard. Using his “trademarked” character voices. That all seem to always fit the story perfectly. For younger to older males. Female voices that are more believable than most speak. Full of strategic pauses and other unspoken traits of a truly skilled narrator. Going to file this under “Classic Daniels”.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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41 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Remarkably Awful - Wouldn’t Recommend To Anyone With An Average IQ Or Higher

The basic premise is intriguing - What we perceive as reality is simply a simulation. This is truly the only positive comment I can make.

- Weak character development
- Weak plot
- Awful first-person POV switching
- Lazily researched or topic is over the author’s head.

When I heard that much of the technology Tychonians enjoy were a result of discoveries made in the simulation, I nearly stopped listening. Tychonians had the physics, material, and infrastructure to create a “super computer” capable of processing an Earth simulation, and yet, they only learned to create airplanes by observing the Wright brothers in the simulation. How does that make sense? What’s more, the “super computer” also bragged about processing a million+ bits per second. Was this written in 1960?

Even when I mentally filtered out the ignorance, the story was incredibly boring, and I never felt emotional for the characters.

I truly can’t understand how there are so many positive reviews. I’m sorry..I feel like this was a lazy piece of work with a disjointed plot, and it’s a terrible waste of time. Glad it was free.

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37 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

The Matrix Meets Divergent

Overview/The Good
If you enjoyed the Divergent or Mocking Jay series, you will similarly like "The Game". The writing style is solid and Luke Daniels' performance is rock solid like always. The story proceeds along parallel lines: A 'real' world and a 'simulation' world. In a interesting turn of the trope, EARTH is the simulated world and the real world is some other planet (earth analogue). The idea that we are living in a simulation is getting some attention in the science community, and even Tesla creator, Elon Musk, toys with this idea. Viewed from that perspective, the plot and character interactions provide fertile soil to consider what such an idea means in a way teens could grasp. A moderately discerning mind can pull allusions to Plato's allegory of the cave and various topics in theology and metaphysics.

Needs Improvement
Full disclosure: I was expecting more of LITRPG-style book. I read three other LITRPG books and 'The Game' popped up in my 'based on past purchases' feed. In fact, it has essentially the same name of a great LITRPG by Cosimo Yap. With that said, it's not strictly speaking LITRPG. Sure the plot centers around a game in which there's rules, but even after reading it, I couldn't tell you how one wins at it. I know there's some formula involving how successful you are in your game life combined with how many people watch your game life.

The ambiguity surrounding the game leads me to my main criticism. There's a lot of hand-waving over seemingly important plot pieces. Ultimately, since the writing is well crafted, I'm going to chalk this up to lazy story-building. Perhaps the target audience is teens? Even so, it's somewhat insulting that some of the major important supporting information for plot points are ignored or glossed over. This also creates a feeling that Schott is trying to convince me of certain theological stances rather than creating a compelling story.

Overall, it's an entertaining book. I don't think I'll read the sequel despite the "cliff hanger" ending. At least not yet. I have other books in my queue that I'm more interested in.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Great book, if you like exposition.

This book lacked story, excitement, and real character development. I felt that 2/3 of the book was exposition. so much of the book was spent explaining the concepts of the world rather than moving along the story. Sure, the exposition was done in a variety of ways that kept it fresh, but there was simply too much of it.
The audio performance was great.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Makes other books look good

I rarely rate books poorly but this was really bad. At first I thought it was the narration but actually that was very good, it's just what he had to read was bad. Did the author even think about the timeline and what the implications of one day equaling one year actually means to the story?? Or the fact they can't talk to the main characters unless meditating but they can talk to the eternals so they tell the eternal to teach the main character to meditate... just #*$&ing tell the eternal the message and pass it on! I get logical gaps but this book was to the point of absurdity. Ugg this was a wasted credit! No I'm going to think positive... this makes me appreciate the other books I've read more.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Not impressed

I felt like the author was attempting to enlighten me about living as opposed to entertaining me with a story of fiction.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Fun-Loving Gamer Novel — Minus the Fun

Another entry in the virtual reality sub-genre of science fiction. The twist here is that the players in The Game don’t remember their real-life existence and they live out entire virtual life spans learning skills and acquiring credits for upgrades on future game play. Some of the ideas are intriguing to think about but at the end I did not feel compelled to continue with the series – not immediately anyway. This novel takes itself very seriously and such an approach must then deliver with profound themes and the resulting advice on better living. But this book is a fun-loving gamer oriented story. I could love it if it had a bit more fun in the mix. Does the sequel offer more fun?

The fantastic Luke Daniels delivers just as I have come to expect. His efforts would have been much more appreciated if he had some elements of humor to work with. And that is the primary factor in my dissatisfaction with The Game. I regret that this sounds a bit harsh but after experiencing the Frontlines series narrated by Luke Daniels I got used to Daniel’s sarcasm. I missed that here.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great fun story

To start, I got this book because of Luke Daniels. Second the synopsis reminded me of Ready player one, which is one of my Favorite books. Truth be told though this book stands on its own two feet. The world building and character building is superb. I couldn't stop listening. The only thing that got me down was the cliff hanger. I look forward to more stories from the world of E.A.R.T.H and true.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Intriguing no doubt, much potential

Luke did great as usual. Eager for next installment and hope the story continues its upward arc. Personally I would like more sound effects and music in books, not much, but some and I may be in the Minority. True and Dani and the rest of the cast piqued my interest. Recommended. Please continue to explore. Question. How does Jesus play into this game world? My brain tries to tie in the inception of this since it was a replacement for childhood. Maybe someone or next books will explain. Well done overall. No dull or lull.

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