Simon sends game design theory and game theory links a-plenty. Simon is v.smart (he beat us at the Idler/NTK videogames pub-quiz last week, after all… if only I hadn’t confused Sinistar with Gravitar! I’m such a lam3r! Curses!), but he’s apparently allergic to blogs… so many thanks to him for permission to blog this excellent link-base alpha, and to Celia for prodding him.
Over to Simon:
“Subject: game design and game theory
… both related but very different.
Game Theory is more about psychology : things like the Coventry Problem
– do we let the Germans drop bombs on Coventry even though it will kill
thousands but may save hundred of thousands in the future because they
still won’t know that we’ve broken Enigma?, Prisoners Dilemma – if you
all keep quiet then we’ll let you go but (or only keep you for
$small_time) but if one of you speaks up he’ll go free and the rest of
you will be killed, and the Hawks and Hares – any system with Hawks
(consumers) and Hares (producers) will necessarily return to
equilibrium.Good books for that are :
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny (Vintage) by Robert Wright
Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict by Roger B. Myerson
Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction by Morton D. Davis
Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga
Game Theory and the Social Contract – Vol. 1 by K. G. Binmore
A Course in Game Theory by Martin J. Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein
The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrodand I think
Man, Play and Games by Roger Caillois
is supposed to be good.It’s a very broad subject and those books cover a big swathe. Most of
what I know is mostly about tactics and not about games (weirdly
enough) so I can’t vouch for everything. I always found ‘Il Principe’
and ‘the Art of War’ to be quite good things to read along with Game Theory books.As for Game Design – as in ‘I want to sit down and plan out a
game which I well sell to unwashed people with poor social skills
and too many consoles’ – there aren’t that many good books since it
tends to be more of a black art. The best suggestion is to read as much
as possible about the games industry and play a shed load of games. May
be hang around arcades and just people watch.Game Design: Secret of the Sages by Marc Saltzman
– gets mixed reviews. Some people swear by it and it doesn’t contain any
code so it’s nice an non scary.Game Design: The Art & Business of Creating Games by Bob Bates
– is good on how a game gets made.Game Design: Theory and Practice by Richard Rouse
– gets reccomended by Amazon. Have no idea, never read it.The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford (I think)
– out of print but seminal early 80s workApart from them read books like …
Trigger Happy by Steven Poole
Joystick Nation by JC Herz
Game Over – How Nintendo Conquered the World by David Sheff
Revolutionaries at Sony by Reiji Asakura
Opening the Xbox by Dean Takahashi
The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steve L. KentAs for web sites
http://www.gamasutra.com/ # especially the lectures at GDC, the Post mortems and the articles
http://www.ludology.org/
http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~cm1822/ijigs11.htm
http://www.gamestudies.org/ # not that it’s ever updated
http://www.joystick101.org/
http://www.knowledge.hut.fi/projects/games/gamelinks.html
http://www.game-research.com/Hope that’s enough :)”
Erm… yeah… I reckon that’ll keep me occupied for a while…
Petafloptimism 
A small correction to Simon: Homo Ludens (which I recently started re-reading) is miscategorized in that list — it has nothing to do with game theory (the original was published in 1938, and even if there was time for Huizinga to learn about the work of Von Neumann et al., I’m not sure that the old-skool historian would stumble across the newfangled economics papers).
FYI, Chris Crawford’s “The Art of Computer Game Design” is available online at:
http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/fac/peabody/game-book/Coverpage.html
Chris also has a huge amount of other writings on his site:
http://www.erasmatazz.com/Library.html
He’s indeed a seminal thinker.
Also, forgot to add: for massively multiplayer online games, there is no better source than Raph Koster’s site (Raph was is an old-time MUD designer, lead designer for Ultima Online, and is now Creative Director for the upcoming Star Wars Galaxies). The amount and quality of information is mind-boggling. A small sample:
– Current and future developments in online games
– What Does It Take to Make a Successful Persistent Online World?
– Running Massively Multiplayer Games
– How to Manage a Large-Scale Online Gaming Community
– Online World Design Patterns
And much, much more on the site.
Wow. No links in the comments. Hrm.
– Raph Koster’s site:
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/
– Current and future developments in online games
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/futuredev.html
– What Does It Take to Make a Successful Persistent Online World?
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/gdc2001production_files/frame.htm
– Running Massively Multiplayer Games
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/gdc_2002_Tutorial_files/frame.htm
– How to Manage a Large-Scale Online Gaming Community
http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/gdc_2002_community_files/frame.htm
– Online World Design Patterns
href=”http://www.legendmud.org/raph/gaming/despat_files/frame.htm
To get an idea who is playing MMORPGs it’s worth taking a look at the Avatars Offline DVD:
http://www.avatarsoffline.com/
“‘Avatars Offline’is the first feature-length documentary exploring the origins, present and future of virtual worlds such as Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot and the upcoming Star Wars Galaxies.”
Or alternatively take a poke around some of the fan networks:
http://www.stratics.com/
http://www.castersrealm.com/
http://www.rpglore.com/
http://www.allakhazam.com/
http://www.antifactory.org
You might dig.