Recommended Reading

If you’re interested in getting into the games industry, or are already in it, and are looking for some recommended reading. So here’s some of the best reading that I’ve come across to do with making games (and while these are design biased they’re highly recommended for all disciplines):

The Art of Game Design
By Jesse Schell, who must have either developed a time machine or clones of himself, as he seems to manage to write a book, give talks, lecture, run a games studio and have visions of a gamepocalypse.

The book itself is very easy to read and full of wisdom on the process behind making games. Jesse uses examples from his career to highlight his reasoning behind his theories and constantly makes very enlightened observations about how a development cycle can, and should, be work.

A Theory of Fun (for game design)
This is by Raph Koster and is a book I’d been meaning to read for a few years, but only got round to recently. And immediately regretted not having read it sooner: there’s lots of revelations inside its pages that are things which I’ve slowly learnt over the years, but could have learnt a hell of a lot quicker if I’d read this earlier.

As well as books there’s a good few websites worth keeping your eye on as well, starting with #altdevblogaday.

PC Gamer’s Tom Francis has written a good article on what makes games good. It’s very nice to see games through the eyes of a journalist and understand that they’re finding it as difficult it as us to easily define what it is that separates the good from the bad.

And, for a quick summary of how to become a designer, The Escapist does a great job with this: