The Gamer's Quarter

[dhex]

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3962&Itemid=2

i have read zero of these, near as i can tell, but if you're not interested in game design i don't see a lot of this speaking to you.
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[dessgeega]

i've read two, and they're understanding comics and watchmen. i've seen most of them, though - xbox 360 uncloaked! (while dean takahashi's enormous head smirks at me from the "i get it" ad on the right.)

i don't read a lot of books. if i did, though, i'd probably read supercade, the hero with a thousand faces, post mortems from game developer, and chris crawford's book, actually. oh, and high score! while we're on the subject.
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[dhex]

eh, hero with a thousand faces has issues. and i genuinely like campbell's work, even if he fotzed zimmer's last book (his mentor) and spawned a legion of "follow your bliss" bumper stickers.

the jungian stuff doesn't bother me so much, but there's a lot of facile connections he makes that just aren't nearly as overwhelming as he thinks they are. at the time of course it was something else, in terms of popularizing cultural history and mythology as subjects worth thinking about.

i enjoyed game over (thanks scratch) and will review it in the next issue.
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[dessgeega]

see, you didn't read zero of them.
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[dhex]

oh i guess not. i read homo ludens too.

has anyone here read Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, by Ian Bogost

i liked the cover.
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[dessgeega]

it's a nice cover.

i just bought high score! for five dollars. that's barely relevent to this thread, though!
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[GSL]

So is that Game Over: Press Start to Continue by David Sheff the same as Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children and Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World ? Am I correct in assuming they're the same book just with timely updates, or are they all seperate titles? The naming scheme is pretty damn unintuitive.

It's good to see Sheff's work as well as Masters of Doom on the list; having those slices of the industry's history conveniently available are great, if for no other reason than to provide cautionary tales of what not to do because it failed with teams bigger and more ambitious than yours. The whole history part is pretty fascinating, too.

But, uh, Tom Clancy and Scott McCloud? The last things developers need is assistance in creating boring-as-fuck technical wankery or instituting artificial and pretentious restraints on a medium, respectively.

[Shapermc]

Yeah, I have heard of about 2/3 of the books yet only read about 5 of them. Yes the 3rd Ed. D&D players handbook is one of them... though the Dungeon Master's handbook is probably much better for this list.

Also, you don't really "read" Supercade as much as look through it.

Oh, and I almost bought Unit Operations, but after talking with a few people about it, and even chatting up the author I decided I was better off not trying to wade through it and then complaining about it. The cover is really sexy though.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[wourme]

[The Great Unwashed]

Surprising to see Designing Virtual Worlds by Richard A. Bartle wasn't there - in this age of MMO's, this thing is, in my opinion, mandatory reading. It helps that it's also hilarious, cynical and downright well-written, also.
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[Harveyjames]

Masters of Doom is like the fastest I have ever read a book. I spent a day at university reading the whole thing in the library, between (and after) classes. I have no idea why, but I found that book gripping.

[dhex]

homo ludens is worth reading.

so shapes, why did that gorgeously covered book throw the red flag? is the author a cockface? is the premise tired and unoriginal? does it use helvetica neue as the body text?

i'm willing to accept that. i've read cockface-y-er. (unless this shit is like 30 bucks or something, then whatever. i can get stuff offa lexis-nexis.)
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[OtakupunkX]

[dessgeega]

high score! arrived and i've been reading through it. and by "reading" i mean looking through the pictures and occasionally stopping to read a paragraph here and there. which is well enough, since the writing is terrible. and frequently inaccurate, and written from a highly westocentric* point of view. there's almost nothing in it i hadn't already heard.

* i'm not sure this is a word. but it's true! the author only barely remembers to mention that some company named nintendo released this 8-bit system like kindof a lot of people bought, and there was a blue hedgehog at some point maybe? but it's all rounded out with the fluffiest, least significant interview with shigeru miyamoto ever.

the only real reason to look at the book is for the pictures, which include making-of stills of the last express, big spreads of console game screenshots, and lots and lots of mislabelings. too bad the design is rarely interesting. these people are not gameplan.

conclusion: i overpaid, but there are some interesting anecdotes from sid meier.
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[Shapermc]

Which version do you have? Does it say "2nd Edition" or anything on the cover?

Anyways, I have to admit to reading almost none of it, yet looking through almost the entire thing. It is a very "coffee table book" book.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

[Lackey]

[Legal Step]

Does writing a list even qualify as game journalism?

I mean on Amazon there are thousands of lists somebody should publish those as a novella or something.

[The Great Unwashed]