This book focuses more on the influence of games than the games themselves, and does include rather a lot of ranting about game theory and why it shouldn’t be used to model anything in the real world. Also a reasonable amount of ranting about AI, and some interesting insights into the evolution of game-playing machines like AlphaGo (Clancy was a researcher for Deepmind at one point).
It is an engaging read - lots of interesting insights into a range of topics, from how randomised decision making (corresponding with the invention of dice) is a uniquely human trait, that underpinned lots of social evolutions, through to the way that curiosity and dopamine interact (Clancy contends that dopamine encourages us to explore and stretch boundaries, behaviours which can underpin compulsive gambling or video game addiction, where exploration and pursuit are endless, hampering our capacity to actually do things - this sounds dumb in my summary but is much better put in the book). Clancy views games as an inevitable part of being human (but not exclusively so), but also raises warning bells about how anything we like can be designed to make it difficult to disengage, exploiting rather than enhancing, our biology.
I would have appreciated more on actual games, and the diffuse focus makes it a bit of everything, but it is a good read that will provide plenty of conversation topics, not just for gamers