I don't understand why Three Body Problem gets so much positive attention? I read it and found it incredibly boring. Most of the pages were spent on the historical stuff, which the characters just weren't interesting enough to sustain; when it finally gets around to the sci-fi part the MMO conceit is dragged out endlessly and fundamentally makes no sense on any level, and then the magic unfolded proton at the end was just a deus ex machina with no connection to anything.
For the calibration comparison, I did enjoy The Player of Games; I felt the setup was a little clunky (the bit about provability of recordings by Minds should have been set up beforehand to give the reader a fair understanding of the world) and I struggled a little because I had little sympathy for the protagonist (and there's only really one) for a long time. But on the whole I did enjoy it; the part about wanting to know that victory is possible is a good crystalization of a genuine insight into human nature, and the vision of devoting one's life to something that completely catches the imagination. And the conclusions works very well as a "continuation of politics by other means" thing.
For the calibration comparison, I did enjoy The Player of Games; I felt the setup was a little clunky (the bit about provability of recordings by Minds should have been set up beforehand to give the reader a fair understanding of the world) and I struggled a little because I had little sympathy for the protagonist (and there's only really one) for a long time. But on the whole I did enjoy it; the part about wanting to know that victory is possible is a good crystalization of a genuine insight into human nature, and the vision of devoting one's life to something that completely catches the imagination. And the conclusions works very well as a "continuation of politics by other means" thing.