#1!! Sort of
(Visited 8881 times) Writing
Feb 282006
Thanks to Boing Boing making the site melt down with popularity, creating a new #1 post of all time, I see that A Theory of Fun also climbed up the charts, hitting #1 in the abstruse category of
Books > Subjects > Computers & Internet > Games & Strategy Guides > Programming. Woo hoo!
This does make it the #5 best selling game book, though, behind the strategy guides and atlases for Sims 2, EQ2, and WoW.
11 Responses to “#1!! Sort of”
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Congratulations! 🙂
So, it actually HAS been here before a few times…. it’s just nice to see it back up there. And after a year and some, too!
Congrats!
Great book deserve great rewards.
Congratulation M. Koster.
Cackle!
xx
It IS an awesome book. =P
I agree. I’ve bought a couple copies and handed them out to people.
It’s kicking Game Gems 5’s butt! (as it well should 🙂
I’m curious, what inspired the “half-toons” format?
Kim, it took that form because it was originally a Powerpoint presentation with that format. The original is on the book’s website. Even for a PPT, that was a bit unusual, but a lot of folks passed it around and called it a “picture book.”
So when the editors at Paraglyph approached me about turning it into a book, we pretty much started from that point — the idea was to expand the picture book, then pair it with an essay that expanded on each pic.
That’s actually how it was written too: the cartoon captions and descriptions first, then all the cartoons were done, and the text was written last, to fit the toons.
I am currently turning over in my head all the pieces to the sequel…
Raph, if possible, would you please publish a postmortem of your book? I’m interested in your writing process and the business aspect of publishing. For example, how did you stay focused on completing the book? How did you collect, organize, and manage material? What did the publisher want from the deal? What compromises were made? What did you learn? What would you do differently? In terms of success, where do you see your book now and in five years? Perhaps this postmortem could be a Gamasutra Feature… 😉
Sounds like a good idea for a post, Morgan. Maybe I’ll write that tomorrow.
Sequel? Do tell!
I hope you keep the format. At first glance it seems lightweight, but I often found the drawings a sort of ‘mental sorbet’ that gave me time to ponder the page’s material a bit before moving forward.
I’m sure you’ve read Understanding Comics too, right? Brilliant. Wish more people did interesting approaches like this.
Maybe I’m jus not 2 brite un’ don’ like tuh reed 2 much.