From theory to inspiration; from history to sociology, if you’re serious about designing and developing games, you’ve got to educate yourself. Veteran game developer, Ernest Adams, has created a list of 50 must-read books for every designer, aspiring and established alike:

What I’ve done is to assemble a collection of books that address the following questions:

• What are games (and videogames)?
• What has been the history of video games?
• How are games related to other media, and what might we learn from those media?
• How and why do people play games? And finally, how (in general terms) should we design and build them?

I can’t claim to have read all these books, much less to own them all; but an informal survey of developers whom I respect has produced some great suggestions.

Regardless of your interest in game development, you’ll find something to inspire and educate you.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 27th, 2006 at 12:14 am and is filed under Development. 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.