ATOF in Game Informer’s top ten game books

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May 212008
 

I got an email about this recently, but haven’t seen it myself. Apparently Game Informer picked the top ten books on gaming, and A Theory of Fun is on the list at #9. Perfect timing of course, given that it’s out of print and I get three inquiries a week on how to get ahold of a copy. Working on it…

David Kushner, author of the excellent Masters of Doom (which I have the galleys of somewhere around here, and which came in at #1) managed to type in the full list. I’ll have to see if I can find a copy of the article.

Edit: here’s the article.A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. In this book, Koster aims a bit higher than the normal historical analysis of the game industry. Instead, the former chief executive officer of Sony Online Entertainment aims to define just what terms like “game” and “fun” actually mean. His answers are fascinating and a must-read for anyone concerned with the art of video games, but what’s more impressive is that Koster – an eccentric and highly skilled writer – actually manages to make this high-brow discussion accessible and, yes, even fun to read. Through an often hilarious mix of academic discussion, first-person anecdotes, and hand-drawn cartoons, Koster brings the reader closer to understanding what role games of all sorts play in human life and what we mean when we say something is “fun.” All in all, it’s a fascinating and unique book that should be required reading at the world’s many video game college programs.

  5 Responses to “ATOF in Game Informer’s top ten game books”

  1. Eolirin says:
    May 22, 2008 at 1:49 am

    Err, I’m mildly confused by the inclusion of Snow Crash on what seems to predominately be a list of non-fiction books about video gaming. Snow Crash’s ties to video gaming are minor at best. Lucky Wander Boy seems to be the only other fictional book, but at least that’s got more to do with gaming. Snow Crash has it’s metaverse, but it’s not really game centric in the slightest. It’s like calling a book about the history of web development a book about video gaming… Gaming can take place on the web sure, but it’s hardly central or even a big part of it.

    Tad William’s Otherland series or even Piers Anthony’s Kilobyte would’ve at least been appropriate if they wanted to include more fiction on that list.

  2. To 10 Videogame Book List « Gamer Brasilis says:
    May 22, 2008 at 7:03 am

    […] Posted by Alvaro Cavalcanti under Game Development, books, game design   I read it on Raph Koester’s site, that led me to David Kushner’s site from which I took the list below. I guess everyone […]

  3. Morgan Ramsay says:
    May 22, 2008 at 10:27 am

    Yeah, that list is pretty bad, but the list is written for their specific readership. Neither Smartbomb nor Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents are included. There are several more books on games and learning, including the recently published Computer Games and Team and Individual Learning.

  4. Gene Endrody says:
    May 22, 2008 at 11:03 am

    I enjoyed “Dungeons and Dreamers” <website for the book> It’s a biography of Richard Garriott but also covers some of the same ground as Masters of Doom – really does a great job of taking you back to the early days of RPGs and MMOs before the big teams.

  5. Eolirin says:
    May 23, 2008 at 1:13 am

    Actually, I think the absence of The Fat Man’s book is the most damning. I very much regret not buying the copy of that that I was paging through years ago, can’t find it anywhere now. Depsite being about game audio, which is something I’m not talented at and would never want to really go into too deeply, it was… a thing of beauty. The man can tell stories.

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