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I love reading non-fiction books. Sometimes I’ll blast through one just so I can look at myself in the mirror and exclaim “I… Know… EVERYTHIIIIIING!!!” just like former astronaut Jack Austin did. Then inevitably I find out that my newfound knowledge has affected my life by only a mere fraction of a percentage and depression ensues.

Anyway, I thought I’d share with you some of my favorite books from the past few years, just in case you have a similar addiction. Most of these books are games-related. If you know of any good books that I might be interested in, leave a comment!

Game design
Rules of Play is, as far as I am aware, the most solid theoretical framework for understanding games and game design. It’s a pretty epic textbook, but it’s absolutely worth digesting. One of the good things about Rules of Play is that it sometimes presents opposing theories and concepts, never claiming there’s one definitive way of looking at games.

If you’re interested in a purely practical take on game design I would recommend Game Design: Theory and Practice by Richard Rouse or Fundamentals of Game Design by Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings. The usual topics are covered such as gameplay balancing, branching storylines, differences between genres, the rock-paper-scissors dynamic, and so on. Only recommended if you’re looking for a basic guide.

Community Building on the Web by Amy Jo Kim is a useful read for community managers or if you’re designing a game with community elements. While it’s focused on web communities it also draws examples from Ultima Online and the like, explaining how to best facilitate online communities, encourage traditions and rituals, empower users over time, and so on. Some examples may be a bit outdated (as it was published in 2000), but the core principles haven’t changed.

For MMOs, check out Designing Virtual Worlds by Richard Bartle.

Gaming
Masters of Doom is a fantastic albeit heavily romanticized biography of John Carmack and John Romero during the early days of Id Software. A real page-turner. I reviewed it for Idle Thumbs.

Most gaming coffee table art books are disappointing, but not Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar. Valve shows how their sausage is made, revealing countless early prototypes, concepts and ideas that for some reason never made it into the final game. At times you can clearly picture multiple alternate versions of Half-Life 2 (some of them horrible, some of them great).

Marketing
I find myself more interested in marketing than I once thought I would. I suppose not everyone would admit this, but general knowledge of marketing really helps the creative process.

If you read only one book about marketing, make sure it is Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It shows through practical anecdotes how you can position a product, a company or even yourself in the market. Some of the book’s wisdom is debatable, particularly its stance on brand extensions, but in general it’s overwhelmingly useful and true.

The Long Tail is more about economics, but it also relates to marketing in the interwebs-age. It describes a certain model used by companies like Amazon.com and Netflix where sales in the “long tail” of low-selling (niche) products allegedly exceed the sales of the short head of hits. The book presents fascinating ideas, but note that they are not without controversy.

Another popular book is The Tipping Point. (It could actually have been named The Bell Curve and made for a nice companion to The Long Tail — oh well.) The Tipping Point is valuable in so far that it reminds you how certain products, ideas and cultural movements will often simmer for a while, then reach a critical point where they turn into “social epidemics”. The book doesn’t tell you much about how to set something up to reach a tipping point, and it’s also somewhat long-winded in examining its cases, but it’s a good read nonetheless.

While I’ve read other books in these areas I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface, so tips are always welcome.

Other media
My favorite book in college was the Bordwell & Thompson textbook Film Art: An Introduction, which tells you everything you need to know about filmmaking, the history of film and common cinematic storytelling structures. Understanding Comics does the same except for comics (and visual language in general), providing insight into such things as timing, transitions, show vs. tell, abstract vs. realistic, etc.

The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video is just what the title says. It looks very amateurish; just some monospace text and filt-tip pen doodles. It’s also pretty hard to find, and you can probably finish reading it in under an hour. But it’s completely awesome and tells you almost everything you need to know about cinematography and editing, including proper framing and balance, the 180 degree rule, sequencing, making montages, etc.

I would also include books here on usability and perhaps typography, except that I don’t know books on those topics that I could heartily recommend. I mean, Jakob Nielsen? Ugh. There is probably a good book on UI design out there that isn’t focused on operating systems or productivity software, but I haven’t really looked for it.

Life, the universe and everything
My ultimate secret book, which I share only with you because I love you, is a book called The Art of Looking Sideways published by Phaidon Press. I bought it about four years ago and I’m still not done with it. Essentially it’s a book about visual awareness and creative thinking, but it’s better described as a giant collection of fascinating quotes, snippets, pictures, stories, anecdotes and drawings on a whole bunch of different topics. Sometimes I pour myself a nice glass of wine in the evening and browse through The Art of Looking Sideways for a while and I’ll often have much better dreams that night. It’s the best book I ever bought.

Currently reading: The World is Flat
Still unread: Twisty Little Passages, Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games
Bonus tip for fellow Dutchies (or Americans, actually): The Island at the Center of the World

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 7:09 pm and is filed under Game Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.