Kane approaches professional gaming from the perspective of an outsider, which goes a long way in helping to make his core point. While most of the world sees "cyberatheletes" as geeky, sun-deprived shut-ins, they are actually driven, competitive players. As Kane puts it, they're the "...kinds of guys who excelled in youth sports but wash out at higher levels of competition".
In order to illustrate this point, Game Boys follows the rivalry between two of the first professional Counter-Strike clans, CompLexity and Team 3D. The rivalry between the two could easily be described as the digital version of the Red Sox and Yankees; complete with superstar players and one cut-throat owner, Craig Levine. As the owner of Team 3D, Levine has managed to earn numerous sponsorships that allow him to attract the best of the best. On the other side of the rivalry is Jason Lake, the underdog owner who pays his team out of pocket.
Using the rivalry between the two as narrative scaffolding, Kane manages to draw numerous parallels between professional gaming and the early history of professional sports. The language of sports is used as a bridge into the world of professional gaming. Though Kane seems familiar with the games covered, he still speaks as a non-player, which helps to pull in outsiders who may be curious about professional gaming. "Game Language" is slowly introduced as it comes up and explained well enough that while readers might not come out of the book knowing everything players are talking about, they should at least have a high school Spanish student's level of proficiency and know the basics, like "frag".
Through interviews with the owners and players, he manages to get a close-up view of the sport. Among some of the more interesting aspects he touches on are players switching teams, causing greater rivalries and the use of ADD medication as a sort of "performance enhancing drug", allowing for more focused concentration. Of course, there are times where Kane tends to go a little too far with his analogies, which gives the appearance that he's trying a little too hard to convince you of his point when the book already does a good enough job when it is allowed to just tell the story.
I went into Game Boys not completely convinced of the professional gaming phenomenon. While reading the book didn't completely convince me that it could one day match the size of other sports, it did open my eyes to the fact that it is more than a fad. For me, the big "ah ha" moment was the parallel drawn between poker and gaming and how television was able to make poker tournaments into a national phenomenon just by finding an interesting hook.
