50 Books for Everyone in the Games Industry 50
Ground Glass writes "Over at Next Generation there's a comprehensive feature on the books that everyone in games should read. It's by game designer and author Ernest Adams, and attacks the medium from every possible angle. Adding these books to your Amazon wishlist could only give you a better understanding of where games have been and where they are (and should be) going."
I guess... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I guess... (Score:4, Insightful)
World-builders and game artists will learn more from the open-ended game narratives as they will from the lone comic offering (and fuck, I can think of PLENTY of books they should've offered from that perspective), while actual business people and those looking to pitch game offerings will appreciate the history books and the more office-politic-style offerings.
Anyone even thinking of developing the mythical 'one-developer game' could use a smattering more of the actual game design and programming, but really needs everything from the coding to the story to the interfacing, And the girl-gender books are good examples how to (and more importantly, NOT to) appeal to a specific demographic.
The entire list, in and of itself, is useless. A breakdown of which books are relevant to which people would have been better.
Snow Crash. (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember, oh how long ago now it seems (1993), visiting the makers of a very fine game (Spectre VR), a company called Velocity, who had "Snow Crash" (Neal Stephenson) as required reading for all programmers. A very fond memory indeed, sitting in Embarcadero, watching the subs and the whales in San Francisco Bay, following along to Hiro P and the gang, while I boned up on my required reading for the job. Pleasant.
Seems to me not much has changed since then, and things (SecondLife) are pretty much as pred
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Halliday & Resnick; Fundamentals of Physics, which isn't even on the list of 50.
KFG
Re: (Score:1)
I may be biased, I've read that book.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
J.L. Borges.
No, really: he anticipated everything in Stephenson, Sterling, and the rest of those guys.
Second Life != Snow Crash (Score:2)
1) An Eskimo with muscles the size of small nation states and a nuclear weapon on his motocycle
2) An Italian grandfather cum piz
Printer Friendly link (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.next-gen.biz/index2.php?option=com_con
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Game people read...? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My own recommendations (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd hoped he was going to recommend reading books like, say, Charles Dickens, or some Oscar Wilde, or a science magazine. Nothing is better to draw inspiration from than media you have very little contact with already. I think if you sat a developer down with a pile of game books, and another developer down with a pile of classic literature or something, the latter would ultimately produce the more unique experience because he would be exposed to new ideas outside of the realm of interactive media.
Just a thought.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Nah. He'd probably just produce a game called "Moby Dick Extreeeme Whale Hunting" which would play much like the old Jaws game on Nintendo.
Re: (Score:2)
Game Development Business and Legal Guide [amazon.com] by Ashley Salisbury
Highly recommended
Re:My own recommendations MOD UP!! (Score:1)
No Neuromancer??? (Score:1)
What with the web section, and the sociology section I would have thought at least Neuromancer would make it....
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? So you don't consider the logical mathematical structure of D&D a good model to review? As in inspiration for the types of structure that a game coder would need to understand?
Either you don't code or you've never considered that when stuff like Telegard came out it was more about D&D than Tolkien... actually, a lot more.
Granted D&D PHG 1st edition isn't a blueprint for cre
Uh huh (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me ask you, the Slashdot readers. Can anyone explain to you how to be the next DaVinci or Picasso? Can anyone tell you how to write the next great Symphony? Can anyone tell you how to make the next blockbuster movie?
The answer in all cases should be an emphatic "No". These are the areas of artistry that reflect their creators' desire to express themselves. You can't tell someone how to do these things, you can only offer suggestions on how to polish and commercialize them.
It's the same with video games. A *good* video game reflects the complexity and intensity of its author. It expresses things in an interactive media that can't be expressed in other ways. People wonder why Mario was such a good side scroller while something like The Rocketeer was considered bland. What made Half-Life so special when there was a market full of First Person Shooters? Why Wing Commander succeeded where so many other shooters failed.
If you analyse these questions, the answer becomes obvious. The amatuer game designer merely plays with game mechanics with no rhyme or reason behind his changes. He may combine things that are popular, or try to cram in every cool thing he's ever seen done in a game. (With apologies to the author, 2Hard4U [sourceforge.net] is an excellent example of this.) The end result, however, feels like game mechanics squished together rather than a cohesive system.
The master game designer has a vision in his mind of what a game should be. He only adds mechanics as required by his vision. He then tweaks and polishes and tweaks again until every last mechanic finds a balance with all the other game mechanics. The final work represents his vision for what a game should be, rather than merely a hope that combining concepts will be fun.
I saw an interesting interview with Shigeru Miyamoto at one point. Apparently, Mr. Miyamoto had created games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., and Zelda based on imaginings he had while walking through the nearby woods. He imagined things like trap doors in the sky, or meeting interesting creatures at the lake. He formed these concepts into little stories which he then sought to tell using the limited canvas of the electronic games platform. The result was all the little intracasies that made these games great. Mario was able to become a giant. He could climb through the sky on a beanstalk. He could smash bricks. Link grew into a man after starting from nothing. He met interesting creatures, and had to defend against enemies. So on and so forth.
So if you want to be a game designer, you have to learn that it's about more than just the technology. You have to have a vision for what your game should be about. Once you have that vision, following it through to its logical conclusion is the only way to make a great game.
Re: (Score:2)
I know how.
First, you must throw away every preconception of the subject (or art) you will work on (drawing, painting, game development, etc). In the case of game development you have to erase from your mind your mind things like "game genre" and "oriented to X type of people". Of course, do
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm... perhaps I should have used the term "Timeless Classic" rather than "blockbuster".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Horrendously offensive content, but so brilliant in structure and execution that it informs many, many games that followed in many, many ways.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You skipped a step. You need to bone up on Craft. Picasso was classically trained, and his early work shows him to have developed an exceptional mastery of academic painting. It was only then that he could begin to adequately address the fai
Re: (Score:1)
Those who don't understand history often can't move forward. They don't know where they are, so they are doomed to repeat the mistakes of others. It may sound like a cliche, but as far as artistry goes, that is the case. If you understand a tradition fully, you can understand it's strengths and weaknesses, and the
The list (Score:2, Informative)
THEORY
Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames, by Steven Poole
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
Rules of Play, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, by Jesper Juul
Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, by Ian Bogost
DESIGN PRACTICE
Fundamentals of Game Design, by Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings
21st Century Game Design, by Chris Ba
50 Books!! Who has time to read? (Score:1)
Film Theory (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
You obviously have no clue why most people play video games. Most real gamers hate cut-scenes and "stories". They break up gameplay and add no real value. People play games to have interactive fun, not watch a movie.
Camera placement should be first person (meaning where your avatar's eyes are looking, the camera points. You are supposed to be seeing through your avatar, not staring at his/her ass.)
Visual composition in games is just recreating real world objects in a realistic fashon. If it is a decent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
So I guess we're calling any post which disagrees with you a hyperbole?
So you are saying Pac-Man was a pretty version of Tetris? Donkey Kong? What about Unreal or Unreal Tournament? Or Quake? Doom? Those games may have had something resembling a story or plot, however they were pretty much a joke. Gamers loved those games because they had fun gameplay and some of them had an immersive environment.
I used GTA as an example because of the gameplay, not the perspective. In fact, the only version I played wa
Game Over, Press Start to Continue (Score:4, Interesting)
Most interesting of all though, is how they describe Hiroshi Yamauchi throughout the book. He almost has mafia-like qualities about him and apparently operated the company in that manner, taking no crap from anyone.
Definitely worth a look if you're into what goes on behind the curtain of the company that gave us Mario.
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly, the book seems to be out of print now, but it is still in demand. My $2 paperback seems to be going for insane prices on Amazon's secondhand market, from $35 to almost $200... now I wish I'd bought the rest out of that clearance bin!
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, by "several decades" you mean "nearly ten decades".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Click print to avoid ads (Score:2)
Use this link [next-gen.biz] for the printable version on one page, instead of ten tiny pages full of banner ads.
Death March (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.amazon.com/Death-March-Developers-Impo
For the lazy... (Score:1)
Tron -- Required viewing.
Matrix -- Required viewing after Tron.
Dungeons and Dragons -- Required viewing.
LotR -- Required viewing after Dungeons and Dragons.
Star Wars 1-3 -- Required viewing (sorry).
Star Wars 4-6 -- Required viewing after SW 1-3.
Star Trek: the Movie -- Required viewing.
Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan -- Required veiwing after Star Trek: the Movie.
I could keep going, but what's the point...
Required gaming would be a better subject and
Re: (Score:1)
My "Required Gaming" list (Score:4, Insightful)
I fully agree that a "Required Gaming" list should accompany the "Reading" and "Watching" ones, so I decided to try and come up with one. I have separated the list into categories (I wouldn't call them genre) and within each category I suggest playing the games in order. And, yes, there are exactly 50 in this list.
Required Gaming
Arcade
This category in a way even more dead than the platformer below, but some classics have to be played nonetheless.
First person Shooters
Naturally this is what many people think about first, when they hear the term "Computer Game", basically because it's the category most closely associated with 3D-Engines, which get most of the press for years now.
Platformers
While this category is practically dead now, it was of great influence in the gaming middle-ages and could offer opportunities for those with a creative idea.
Beat'em Ups
Well, they're brainless fun, nothing more to say, playing just a couple should suffice IMHO.
Simulations
This is a difficult category, as many games in it could be listed elsewhere or not be considered "games" per se.
Strategy Games
I have to admit not knowing much about these, a the category doesn't appeal to me.
Adventures
Now this category might be a bit overrepresented due to my love for it, but claims of its death are greatly exaggerated.
Roleplaying Games
While I love Pen & Paper gaming, computers always pose a problem, because they can't react like a human could. I feel thus compelled to include few titles that don't deserve the categorization, but would commonly be given it by game
Re: (Score:2)
Adventures:
- The Last Express (to see an adventure that plays in realtime instead of waiting for the player to act)
- Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy (dito, but implemented in a different way)
- Façade (dito, also shows that storys don't need monsters and crazy to be interesting)
- The Longest Journey
Strategy:
- XCom:UFO (best thing that ever happened in the genre, great demonstration on how to combine different modes of gameplay into a single game)
- Syndicate (to see that RTS can be much more th
Re: (Score:1)
Neither of your lists include Tetris, Street Fighter II, Super Mario 64, Tomb Raider, any Final Fantasy game or any sports game. All of which would be very important for your "required gaming" list.
I'd love to see someone try to make a real list of "canon" games someday though.
Katamari? (Score:1)
That's not Sonya! (Score:1)