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Ask HN: What are some must-read books about video games and gaming history?

19 points by Kovah ↗ HN
I recently finished reading Doom Guy by John Romero and it's one of the most interesting books i've read on the last years. What are some other books that one should read about video games and the history of gaming?

21 comments

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amerkhalid
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner

It was also amazing read and it just made me fall in love with programming all over again. And thanks for mentioning Doom Guy, just ordered it.

briangray
Responding to you because Masters of Doom is the right answer here. It shares a lot of details from Doom Guy, but gives a more complete timeline and better views, from multiple sides. It's a book that just makes you want to hack a game together. That's coming from someone who wasn't old enough to idolize the devs when they hit celebrity status.

Other books I really enjoyed:

- Spelunky by Derek Yu: Written by the sole developer of the game. Covers idea to development to release. Really captures a nice feeling of indie solo game making.

- The WoW Diary: Focused development 'journals' from one of the WoW level designers. Has a lot of original concept art and early alpha images. Goes over a lot of history and is just a fun read with some good insight.

- Half-Lift 2: Raising the Bar: Concept art, journals, iterations, and details from devs and HL2. Simply a fantastic insight into what they went through progressing from Gold Source to the Source Engine. Where Masters of Doom gives the written history of Doom, this book gives the nuts and bolts of HL2 and CSS. It is highly sought after by fans and developers alike and can be hard to come by.

OnionBlender
It depends which games you like.

  - Rogue-likes? Read Dungeon Hacks. 
  - Zacktronics games? Read Zach-Like. (Free on Steam) 
  - Sid Meier games? Read his memoir. 
  - NES? Read "I am Error".
markus_zhang
If you haven't read "Masters of Doom" then that's probably the next step -- but I do consider "Doom Guy" better, in the sense that John Romero gave a much fuller description of ID's early years -- I think it matters more for Indies these days than the later years (post-Quake).

I'm looking for some books describing the process of Console hardware development -- e.g. why did the team decide to pick this chip, why the architecture, etc. Does anyone have any idea?

amerkhalid
I really enjoyed Console Wars by Blake J. Harris. It doesn't go into very deep technical details but there were some details about how some of the technical decisions were made.

And it was very nostalgic read for anyone growing up with video games in 80s and 90s.

jmspring
Racing the Beam. About the Atari VCS.
muzani
50 years of text games

https://if50.substack.com/

Not just if you're interested in text games, but dealing with technical restrictions, early inspirations, and some of the things we've lost.

HellDunkel
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - there is a great chapter on Sierra and also Atari if i remember correctly.

Jordan Mechner's The Making of Prince of Persia

approxim8ion
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made, by Jason Schreier

Not particularly deep, but a pretty good read about more modern AAA games and crunch in the industry.

guy4261
I read a few titles from https://bossfightbooks.com/ . As it happens much, I read about games I did not actually play. It was a nice reading though. The Majora's Mask and Spelunky books were particularly sweet, and encouraged me to watch playthroughs of both games (which I still haven't played).
krapp
The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers
mindcrash
Although it's part art book and part text features: Every Day is Play (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamepaused/everyday-is-...), but because it has been funded through Kickstarter and published only once at the time it could be a rare find (although a quick Google search showed me that some copies are being sold through the likes of Ebay)
ElCapitanMarkla
I’m only mentioning the ones I haven’t seen mentioned here so far

The Ultimate History of Video Games - Steven L. Kent - loved this. Sid Meier’s Memoir was good. And not really a must read but I enjoyed David Kushner’s Jacked about the Grand Theft Auto guys.

onlinesimon
For the definitive history of video games, I recommend:

The Ultimate History of Video Games, Volume 1 & 2. (by Steven L. Kent)

For the definitive history, with behind the scenes interviews and commentary by many legendary individuals including:

Nolan Bushnell - Founder of Atari and a pioneer of the video game industry.

Ralph H. Baer - Often called the "Father of Video Games," he developed the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey.

Shigeru Miyamoto - Legendary game designer from Nintendo, known for creating iconic franchises like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Donkey Kong.

Hiroshi Yamauchi - Former president of Nintendo who transformed the company into a video game giant.

Hideo Kojima - Renowned game designer known for the Metal Gear series.

Trip Hawkins - Founder of Electronic Arts (EA) and a significant figure in the development of the video game publishing industry.

David Crane - Co-founder of Activision and designer of games like Pitfall!.

Sid Meier - Creator of the Civilization series and a pioneer in strategy games.

John Romero - Co-founder of id Software and co-creator of Doom and Quake.

Will Wright - Creator of SimCity and The Sims, known for his innovative simulation games.

The first volume takes us up to the early 1990s, and the second volume is for 1991 to early 2020s.

This is an epic encyclopaedic reference of video game history, from the point of view of the game developers themselves, and the industry heads.