Hello there.

There is a review on Gamasutra for the excellent introductory text "Introduction to Game Development"

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130820/book_review_introduction_to_game_.php which I was very keen to purchase.

It is a complete introductory course on the entire field of game development from concept to publication. Unfortunately it is over 11 years old now and long out of print. I was wondering if anybody could suggest a more recent equivalent? Particularly (not necessarily) if available in an eBook format.

Thank you very much.

I don't know the book, but from reading the topic list, I would say "Introduction" is the keyword there. Each of the topics is wide enough to fill a book shelve on its own. To compress that into a single book means you can't do much more than skimming over the topic. That is great to get a broad overview, but I don't believe it suffices if you really want to take up game development.

A second consideration is the age. While math is all still valid, technology is moving fast. You don't program graphics or AI any more like you did 11 or 7 years ago.

If you can get hold of the book, by all means, read it, but I don't expect it to give you enough information to really start programming and publishing games. You'll need much more in-depth information on each topic.

As an alternative, I'd suggest to check out the FAQs of the various relevant sub-forums at this site. They likely give you good up-to-date resources as a starting point. You will need to make more room for books though, as it won't be a single book :)

Thanks. Its a thousand-page course based on the IGDA curriculum written by industry veterans which is why I was so interested in it. Unfortunately it hasn't been updated for some time so yes, I'd probably be better off looking for a couple of more recent books.

2009 is not that late. Of courses things changed: PBR is now common, so artists will tend to move to a more scientific way to work. Graphic cards can display a bit more triangles, and graphic developer can now use more high-end technologies.

But since that date, the game development should not have changed that much.

In theory, it should be possible for a single book to give you enough to get started, especially if it focuses on one engine or one platform. It was certainly the case when I was buying such books between the mid 90s and the mid 00s. But is anyone publishing such books today?