Austrian Antonio Schachinger (31) has received the book prize for the best German-language novel of 2023. In ‘Echtzeitalter’, it is about a gamer who rises to champion in Age of Empires 2 (Steam), but no one in the ‘real world’ of adults acknowledges it; there, only his grades, which keep getting worse, are seen.
What kind of prize is this?
- The ‘Deutscher Buchpreis’ (bdp) is the most prestigious award a novel can win in Germany. It is endowed with €25,000 and awarded by the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels.
- Seven jury members reviewed about 200 books that were published from October 2022 to September 2023, created a shortlist of favorites, and chose the winner from there.
- Since 2005, the prize has annually awarded the most significant German-language novel of the year: in 2005, it was ‘Es geht uns gut’ by Arno Geiger. In 2008, Uwe Tellkamp won with ‘Der Turm’.
Now the prize has been won by the only 31-year-old Austrian author Antonio Schachinger.
Age of Empires is an iconic series of strategy games. The first game was released in 1997:
15-year-old becomes champ in Age of Empires 2, but the grades ….
This is what his novel is about: The novel ‘Echtzeitalter’ is about 15-year-old Till, who attends an elite boarding school in Vienna. After the death of his father, he retreats into the world of video games. Especially the strategy game Age of Empires II captivates him.
Already at 15, he becomes one of the 10 best players in the world, but his school grades are deteriorating. In the adult world, no one is interested in his success in the virtual. Mom is anyway addicted to Candy Crush.
What is Age of Empires 2? Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings
was released in 1999 by Microsoft: It is a real-time strategy game set in the Middle Ages. It is considered a milestone in gaming. Players gather resources, construct buildings, raise armies, and defeat their enemies.
The series Age of Empires
was one of the first multiplayer games that could establish competitive play with and against each other via an online mode. The podcast “Stay Forever” dealt extensively with the history and impact of Age of Empires in May 2023.
Even today, Age of Empires 2, in the ‘Definitive Edition’, which was released in 2019, has about 15,000 average active players on Steam.
The world of computer games as a place of fantasy and freedom
This is what the jury says: The jury praised ‘Echtzeitalter’ for its subtle irony and how the present is described there: Raw violence speaks from educated pupils. The world of computer games offers a place of fantasy and freedom.
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Echtzeitalter: Roman | Deutscher Buchpreis 2023* | Zu Amazon |
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This is what the author says: Schachinger says he sees himself in a mediator role when gaming. He knows that there is not much overlap between people who buy books and those who have knowledge of computer games.
I wanted to show what actually happens when you play, what it means, and how hard it is to overcome this bridge from the detailed knowledge that Till has to his mother’s level of knowledge.
The difficulty of explaining to mom what one actually does and why one cannot just pause in multiplayer games is something many gamers will relate to.
Young gamers in the real world who want to make a name for themselves in e-sports still encounter bizarre problems:
