Top 50 Books on the Game Industry Thursday, October 19, 2006

This article was making its rounds last week, but remaining true to my own schedule, I figured I'd share it late.

Ernest Adams, author of a number of books on game design, wrote an article for Next Generation entitled "50 books for Everyone in the Game Industry", highlighting 50 of the most influential and insightful works on the topic to date. He breaks them down into twelve categories, such as theory, business, and the history of games, attempting to cover a very broad range of topics that the gaming industry deals with. One of his topics is "inspirations," books "whose influence can be felt in many games" and "have helped make the game industry what it is today":

1. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, by various authors
3. Star Trek, originated by Gene Roddenberry
4. The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy
5. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
6. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell
7. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, by Janet H. Murray

This seems like a rather odd set of "inspirational" choices. I think D&D's influence on games of all kinds is undeniable, and it, in turn, owes its inspiration mainly to Tolkien, Moorcock and Howard. But Tom Clancy instead of Ian Fleming? Sure, Splinter Cell and its kin are popular games, but how many incarnations has James Bond seen, including dozens of novels, 22 movies, and countless table-top and video games? Star Trek instead of Star Wars? Puh-lease. How many Star Trek games have there been in the last 10 years, as opposed to the tireless efforts of LucasArts marketing the Star Wars franchise?

As for the rest of the list, I've only read one of the books: Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, which I got after attending the author's seminar on visual design a few years ago. I got a lot out of it, and had a chance to speak to the man briefly afterwards. I brought up the topic of user interface design and asked him what he thought of the fact that UI design is not treated as a discipline in its own right. He responded: "That's because it's a solved problem." I was shocked. It was as if, to him, it was somehow entirely clear what the best way to convey information to a user is, and what is the most efficient way to gather input from him. He couldn't have meant that, could he? Even after thinking it over for a good 3 or 4 years since the seminar, it seems obvious that he meant just that. Either he didn't understand my point or he doesn't know what he's talking about.

For those looking for the whole list, I've reproduced it here in title order:

1. 21st Century Game Design, by Chris Bateman and Richard Boon
2. A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander et al
3. A Theory of Fun for Game Design, by Raph Koster
4. Balance of Power: International Politics as the Ultimate Global Game, by Chris Crawford
5. Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities, by Amy Jo Kim
6. Creating the Art of the Game, by Matthew Omernick
7. Designing Virtual Worlds, by Richard Bartle
8. Developing Online Games: An Insider’s Guide, by Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Petrovsky
9. Digital Game-Based Learning, by Marc Prensky
10. Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, by various authors
11. Everything Bad Is Good for You, by Steven Johnson
12. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
13. From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, edited by Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins
14. Fundamentals of Game Design, by Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings
15. Game Over, Press Start to Continue, by David Sheff, with new material by Andy Eddy
16. Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, edited by Chris Bateman
17. Gender-Inclusive Game Design, by Sheri Graner Ray
18. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, by Jesper Juul
19. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, by Janet H. Murray
20. Homo Ludens, by Johan Huizinga
21. Joystick Nation, by J.C. Herz
22. Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, by Gerard Jones
23. Man, Play, and Games, by Roger Caillois
24. Masters of Doom, by David Kushner
25. Pause and Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative, by Mark Stephen Meadows
26. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd edition by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister
27. Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon, edited by Joseph Tobin
28. Postmortems from Game Developer, edited by Austin Grossman
29. Rules of Play, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
30. Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby
31. Star Trek, originated by Gene Roddenberry
32. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee
33. Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971 - 1984, by Van Burnham
34. The Ambiguity of Play, by Brian Sutton-Smith
35. The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman
36. The Fat Man on Game Audio: Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness, by George Alastair 'The Fat Man' Sanger
37. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell
38. The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy
39. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
40. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick P. Brooks
41. The Oxford History of Board Games, by David Parlett
42. The Ultimate History of Video Games, by Steven L. Kent
43. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Visual Explanations and Envisioning Information, all by Edward Tufte
44. The Xbox 360 Uncloaked by Dean Takahashi
45. Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames, by Steven Poole
46. Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud
47. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan
48. Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, by Ian Bogost
49. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
50. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, by James Paul Gee

And for anyone who's looking to get me a Christmas present, consider this a shopping list.