ONLINE GAMES AND COMMUNITY
Games played in groups by people on networks are so different from the traditional single-player experience that they almost constitute a separate industry.

Developing Online Games: An Insider’s Guide, by Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Petrovsky
This isn’t a book about designing online games or even developing them, but about planning to develop them: putting the necessary corporate structures in place to construct, launch, and manage an online game. No programming here: the emphasis is on setting up an ongoing service and building its community of users. Most useful for managers and business development or marketing types.

Designing Virtual Worlds, by Richard Bartle
This is the design book that Developing Online Worlds is not. Bartle was instrumental in creating the first MUD, and this huge (768 pages!) book reveals the depth of his quarter-century of experience on every subject from geography design to the ethics of censorship. Readable, comprehensive, required.

Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities, by Amy Jo Kim
The technology of web-building may have changed since this book was first published in 2000, but its principles are timeless. Even the fundamental principle that drives behind the much-vaunted “Web 2.0” was already here: empower your members. Despite the stereotypes, gamers are gregarious bunch (at least, online) and building up a happy community of them is one of the best and least expensive ways to promote and support your game. Although Kim’s book is not aimed specifically at the game industry, it offers invaluable lessons.

THE HISTORY OF GAMES
Where we came from and what it was like back then.

The Oxford History of Board Games, by David Parlett
Although videogames are looking more and more like movies every day, their roots are still in play, not in presentation, and for much of human history that meant board games. I had never heard of this book until two different videogame designers happened to mention it within weeks of one another. Comprehensive (and expensive), it’s an excellent guide to the past, and includes tips on design that are still valuable today.

The Ultimate History of Video Games, by Steven L. Kent
The title is a bit misleading; this monster book is primarily a history of the United States game industry, not the whole world’s, and that story will not be complete until similarly exhaustive studies of the European and Japanese industries have been published. Still, it provides loads of detailed information on subjects that many of us know only vaguely: the role of pinball in the pre-videogame days, the history of the crash of 1983, the various moral panics over the effects of games upon children, and the consequences of some important lawsuits.

Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971 - 1984, by Van Burnham
Before long we’re going to be looking back on the glory days of the video arcade with the same kind of nostalgia that our grandmothers exhibit when talking about listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio. This big colorful coffee-table book takes you back to those happy times.

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