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50 Books for Everyone in the Games Industry
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."
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The writeups are good, but here's the list for the lazy.
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 Bateman and Richard Boon
Gender-Inclusive Game Design, by Sheri Graner Ray
A Theory of Fun for Game Design, by Raph Koster
Balance of Power: International Politics as the Ultimate Global Game, by Chris Crawford
Digital Game-Based Learning, by Marc Prensky
WRITING
Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, edited by Chris Bateman
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Creating the Art of the Game, by Matthew Omernick
Envisioning Information, all by Edward Tufte
Pause and Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative, by Mark Stephen Meadows
MUSIC AND AUDIO
The Fat Man on Game Audio: Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness, by George Alastair 'The Fat Man' Sanger
ONLINE GAMES AND COMMUNITY
Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide, by Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Petrovsky
Designing Virtual Worlds, by Richard Bartle
Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities, by Amy Jo Kim
THE HISTORY OF GAMES
The Oxford History of Board Games, by David Parlett
The Ultimate History of Video Games, by Steven L. Kent
Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971 - 1984, by Van Burnham
SOCIOLOGY
Joystick Nation, by J.C. Herz
Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, by
Gerard Jones
What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, by James Paul Gee
Everything Bad Is Good for You, by Steven Johnson
From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, edited by Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins
Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon, edited by Joseph Tobin
PEOPLE, PROJECTS AND BUSINESSES
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick P. Brooks
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd edition by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister
Postmortems from Game Developer, edited by Austin Grossman
Game Over, Press Start to Continue, by David Sheff, with new material by Andy Eddy
Masters of Doom, by David Kushner
Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby
The Xbox 360 Uncloaked by Dean Takahashi
OTHER MEDIA AND USEFUL DISCIPLINES
Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee
A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander et al
The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman
DEEP BACKGROUND
Homo Ludens, by Johan Huizinga
Man, Play, and Games, by Roger Caillois
The Ambiguity of Play, by Brian Sutton-Smith
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan
INSPIRATIONS
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook, by various authors
Star Trek, originated by Gene Roddenberry
The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy
Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell
Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, by Janet H. Murray
So I say this, if you had to have one book for games programmers to read, and not 10, which would it be?
J.L. Borges.
No, really: he anticipated everything in Stephenson, Sterling, and the rest of those guys.