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"50 Game Industry Books" Discussion |
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 |   Anonymous Poster | |||
Posted - 10/11/2006 5:10:12 PM | ||||
| I don't see any technical books on that list...engine design, programming, design patterns, etc. | ||||
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 | gwihlidal GDNet+
Member since: 4/23/2003 From: Edmonton, Alberta | |||
Posted - 10/11/2006 6:19:00 PM | ||||
| More like "50 Game Industry Books for Game Designers" ~Graham | ||||
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| anyGould
Member since: 9/8/2006 From: Edmonton, Alberta | |||
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Posted - 10/11/2006 6:20:23 PM | ||||
| It's pointed out that the list refers to the gaming industry in general, not just computer/video games. (As an aside, I'd second the recommendation of Rules of Play - it's a very insightful read for game design of all types.) | ||||
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| MrRowl
Member since: 1/2/2004 From: Oxford, Oxfordshire | |||
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Posted - 10/12/2006 6:50:47 AM | ||||
| "50 books from which everyone in the game industry could learn something" therefore you wouldn't expect to see technical books, since designers, artists (these are people too!) would, in the vast majority of cases, not be able to learn anything from them. On the other hand, I guess the idea is that even programmers would benefit from reading a bit about the less technical aspects. I think this should be considered a complement to programmers, not a slight! | ||||
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| eng3d
Member since: 5/18/2000 From: Santiago, R. Metropolitana. | |||
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Posted - 10/12/2006 11:06:55 AM | ||||
| This books are more focused in common people rather that developers. | ||||
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| Anonymous Poster | |||
Posted - 10/12/2006 11:55:22 AM | ||||
Quote: They have sections for: # Writing # Graphic Design # Music / Audio It does say everyone and what's to say programmers (we're people too), in the vast majority of cases, would not learn much from the writing/art/music stuff? So why not have a programming or technical section (it is a BIG part of the process). I would have even settled for it being under the "Other Media and Useful Disciplines" section  | ||||
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| Anonymous Poster | |||
Posted - 10/12/2006 12:20:01 PM | ||||
| The very first paragraph of the article actually answer these questions, so just RTFA ? | ||||
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| Tesseract_Hotplate
Member since: 6/6/2005 From: Atlanta, GA | |||
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Posted - 10/12/2006 2:12:12 PM | ||||
| It's pretty funny how they play fast and loose with the truth: "Publishers turned out a variety of low-budget games in pink boxes which sensible girls, quite rightly, wouldn’t touch with a bargepole." Um, right. Actually games like Fashion Designer Barbie and such sold well enough to create a franchise. Real market research has shown clearly that in order to sell to a special interest group you have to market specifically to that group. So yeah, pink boxes and frilly bows and stories about horses. They sell. "A Theory of Fun is an important and valuable book." I actually checked this list primarily to see if this god-awful waste of paper was mentioned. Ever since this ridiculous, pointless, self-contradictory book was published game designers (the 'games are art!' crowd who seem more concerned with asserting games are art than actually making artistic games) have been crowing about how amazing it is. But it isn't. Not only is Koster's fundamental assertion - that the primary purpose of games is to 'educate' - flawed, he even contradicts that assertion as soon as he states it. The rest of the book is filled with drawings, opinions, 'cutesy' family stories, and half-baked ideas. All coming from the guy who created ... Star Wars Galaxies! Wow. Ernest Adams himself isn't exactly the best guide. His articles for Gamasutra are always pointless and self-important ramblings about how only he truly understands game design. Odd. What was the last game he made? MobyGames says "Soldner: Secret Wars". Yikes. | ||||
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| stimarco
Member since: 4/11/2000 | |||
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Posted - 10/12/2006 3:59:23 PM | ||||
Quote: I reviewed this for GDNet and stand by every word of my review. Many people seem to have misread it as an assertion that games are about education. This isn't what Koster is trying to say. He's saying the process of discovery is inextricably linked with the concept of 'fun'. My own view is that a lot of what we call 'fun' can be boiled down to 'novelty', but when you get down to this level, it's just arguing over semantics. (And most of my family and relatives are teachers, so maybe I'm biased.) "Fun" is one of those words that doesn't actually mean what many people think it means. It appeared in the late 17th century as a derivation from an obsolete word for "to cheat or hoax". (Source: OED.) The modern use of it as an adjective meaning "enjoyable" is a recent phenomenon. The word is, in my own opinion, now used as a convenient container for "the set of sources of enjoyment". Most of these sources appear to have some link -- sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit -- with the concept of novelty. There must, after all, be _some_ reason why humans have tended towards investigation and the quest for knowledge for its own sake. I believe that humans are somehow hardwired to derive pleasure from the discovery of the novel and new. The acquisition of information, intelligence, understanding and so on all seem to stem from some innate desire to _know_. And this is why no game with a finite limit to its novelty will be fun forever. Eventually, even the most hardened players of an FPS will have seen all there is to see, learned all the tricks and quirks there are to learn, and squeezed all the information they can out of the game. And so they get bored and move on. Pokémon and its ilk are the classic example of this desire for novelty. It also explains so much about fads and fashions. But I digress. (And then some.) -- Sean Timarco Baggaley | ||||
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| Tesseract_Hotplate
Member since: 6/6/2005 From: Atlanta, GA | |||
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Posted - 10/12/2006 5:43:35 PM | ||||
Quote: Then ... why does he say that? I don't have my copy with me (I round-filed it ages ago) but I distinctly remember he says the 'meaning' of games is that they educate. Of course he then gives the perfect counter-example (gambling) and makes a half-assed attempt to show that gambling is really about learning (it isn't). But that was one of his main points. He spends several pages on the subject. Quote: This is demonstrably false. Most of us know people who still play Counter Strike, DOOM, and Quake 1 & 2. When was the last innovation in any of those games? Why do people buy Madden every year - it's still a football game, often with NO additions. I can cite example after example. Even real-world examples like basketball - which has been roughly the same game since it was invented - show the flaws in this reasoning. It's just a horrible book. And when you consider the track record of the author - working on that awful Star Wars game then disavowing any involvement with it because he was embarassed by the result - it just seals the deal. | ||||
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| GBGames
Member since: 1/25/2001 From: Chicago, IL | |||
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Posted - 10/13/2006 9:24:27 AM | ||||
| Basketball and Counter-Strike are games in which the opponents are usually human and so there is infinite variety to each game. It gets boring if you play someone who does the same exact thing over and over. It doesn't get boring if the opponent does things that surprise you or require you to stay on your toes. Of course, then there are games like Nethack. Is it enough that the game randomizes each experience so that you don't know what to expect? Is Minesweeper also then a game that you can't get bored playing? So far, it seems to be, but I imagine that there is more to it than simple randomness. EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it, it probably does have more to do with interesting choices than randomness. Even if the game is randomized, you still get to make the choice of what to do. And if you have human opponents, it gets interesting because you then have to deal with human reactions to human actions. Each one makes things more interesting. So why is CS or basketball still fun? I think it is because in any given situation there are multiple choices. You never get to a point where you can only make one move or stop playing. | ||||
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| stimarco
Member since: 4/11/2000 | ||||
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Posted - 10/13/2006 11:59:09 AM | |||||
Quote: Because education isn't just sitting in a classroom trying very hard to stay awake while staring at a tweed-jacketed bore droning on about abstract formulae or Shakespeare. Education happens to us all the time. Novelty surrounds us. Ask any driver and they'll tell you that they're still learning new tricks and techniques many years after they passed their test. Ask _anyone_ who enjoys his work and you'll hear about how it's full of novelty -- new things to learn. New things to see. New discoveries. New _knowledge_. That, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is _education_. Schools generally force-feed their charges with raw data -- names of long-dead kings; dates of long-forgotten battles; long, meaningless extracts of Shakespearean dialogue hammered into our memories by sheer force of rote repetition -- and precious few teachers realise that context is often even more important than the information itself. Even fewer realise that novelty applies not just to the raw data, but also to the means of its delivery. Kids aren't machines. Humans crave novelty and stimulation. Games provide it. A bored professor scrawling on a blackboard while regurgitating his ten-year-old notes is a damned sight less novel than watching two lunatics playing with explosives on "Mythbusters". The former may know his subject, but the presenters of the latter know how to _present_ it in novel and stimulating ways. Or it will as long as the format stays fresh. Once it turns into formula and cliché and thus ceases to provide the novelty and stimulation, it will be no better than the bored professor. When I (and Koster) talk about education, the above is how we define the term. Quote: This is demonstrably false. Most of us know people who still play Counter Strike, DOOM, and Quake 1 & 2. When was the last innovation in any of those games? Why do people buy Madden every year - it's still a football game, often with NO additions. I can cite example after example. Even real-world examples like basketball - which has been roughly the same game since it was invented - show the flaws in this reasoning. [/quote] All those games you mention are _multiplayer_ games. You play them against other _humans_, not against the machine. Humans, as I'm sure you've noticed, are absolutely brilliant at inventing novel and stimulating ways of blowing each other up. Even in virtual environments. Quote: It's not a perfect book. I believe my review mentions that it lacks a memorable conclusion and just seems to peter out -- as if Koster had more cartoons than he knew what to do with and so padded it out near the end. The pacing isn't perfect. But then again, being able to design a game doesn't automatically make you a Booker Prize-winning author. I've never played SW Galaxies. I _have_, on the other hand, heard of Ultima Online, which was one of the pioneers of the MMORPG concept. And Koster was a lead designer on that. From my perusals of the various SWG websites, it seems most of the game's problems are primarily technology flaws rather than massive game design faults. (Yes, there is a lot of vocal criticism of some of the changes made since, but they seem purely subjective rather than objective criticisms. Anyone who expects a 30-year-old movie franchise to be directly mappable to an interactive medium needs a swift kick up the arse with the Pragmatic Boot Of Necessary Compromise.) -- Sean Timarco Baggaley | |||||
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| Anonymous Poster | |||
Posted - 10/14/2006 6:53:19 PM | ||||
| The title of the book is "A Theory of Fun" not "The Theory of Fun." I have read the book. Is it the end all, be all definition of fun? No, but it does provide an interesting perspective. Games can be art. Does that make every game a work of art? No. Does someone who smears shit on canvas undo every truly great work of art composed on that same medium? | ||||
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| Anonymous Poster | |||
Posted - 10/16/2006 1:16:02 PM | ||||
| After extensive review of the books (i saw the title names and 2 lines of the description), i came to a superb conclusion about the 50 Game Industry books compiled by Mr. Ernest Adams, the conclusion is, the books are absolute crap, junk etc etc, you get the point. i'm sure most of you guys will agree with me. | ||||
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| Tesseract_Hotplate
Member since: 6/6/2005 From: Atlanta, GA | |||
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Posted - 10/16/2006 5:13:35 PM | ||||
Quote: Oh, please. That is such hair-splitting. If this were an actual debate I'd call you a dictionary whore. Basketball is EXACTLY THE SAME GAME EVERY TIME YOU PLAY IT. If you want to say that 'variety' comes from someone juking left then shooting versus juking right then shooting, then you have to say variety is gunning down those aliens with your pistol versus your AK47, or passing to your fullback instead of your tailback. Using the dictionary definition, variety generates itself because no two actions are exactly the same. You've managed to define the point out of discussion. Quote: Do you even play CS? Every round of dust is usually the same: everyone rushes. Yet I see people play that level over and over and over and over. I don't think it can be more clearly illustrated that this is a flawed point. | ||||
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| Tesseract_Hotplate
Member since: 6/6/2005 From: Atlanta, GA | |||
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Posted - 10/16/2006 5:23:29 PM | ||||
Quote: Great, so two people have proven Koster's point by showing that EVERYTHING proves Koster's point - they prove themselves! Novelty is self-generating! Education happens all the time! I can see why someone had to write a thesis about that. I am going to write a book that proposes the theory that games are really about exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide. I mean, we do it while we play games. Obviously the two are inextricably linked. What, you think it's stupid? Well did you ever try playing a game WITHOUT breathing, smart arse? Huh?!? Quote: Yeah, that strategy of bunny-hopping and sprinting as fast as possible towards bomb zone A or B ... that's pretty innovative. Dancing around the point doesn't change the point: Koster is wrong. Games are not about education. Games are about fun. That is perhaps the most obvious fact on record: if you're not having fun in some way playing the game, you stop. Fun is NOT 100% - or even majorly - based on 'education' or 'learning'. I notice that everyone supporting Koster's unfounded theory handily avoided the issue of gambling. When you can tell me what a person pulling a slot machine arm is 'learning', I'll agree with you. Otherwise they're just pleasure addicts. | ||||
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| shortstack
Member since: 12/3/2004 From: Toronto, Ontario | |||
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Posted - 10/17/2006 7:47:01 AM | ||||
Quote: I don't. 'Hero with a Thousand Faces' is in there, 'Understanding Comics' is in there, hell Marshall McCluhan is in there. Come on. There's a lot of essential reading on there; not just essential for game design, but for basic, general knowledge. I don't agree with the ENTIRE list, but it's pretty darn good. I would probably have thrown something by Chris Crawford on there. So what books would you guys have rather seen on the list? (aside from calling it crap) I mean, what books are on your shelf right now that you would never part with? | ||||
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| Tesseract_Hotplate
Member since: 6/6/2005 From: Atlanta, GA | |||
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Posted - 10/18/2006 3:04:49 PM | ||||
| I think that's actually one of the problems. The list isn't actually about games, it's about citing esoteric references to give the impression of being smart/worldly. It's the type of pretension that is currently swallowing game design whole. | ||||
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