Some Books I’ve Been Reading
April 2nd, 2009
This week has been devoted to learning new things about the iPhone, so I thought today migh be a good day to talk briefly about two books I’ve read/been reading.
A Theory of Fun for Game Design
First I’d like to talk about Raph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” (Amazon link):
This is the best book on game design that I’ve ever read. When you read the book, it feels as though Koster is talking to you, which isn’t surprising, since I believe the book was based off a presentation he used to give on game design.
The book is laid out with every left page as text, and every right page as a hand-drawn image with a caption. If you imagine the book as a presentation, the left page would be what the speaker is saying, while the right page would be their slide presentation. It works surprisingly well in book form. The images and cartoons serve to reinforce what was said in the text and vice versa.
At the core of the book is the idea that fun is about the process of learning something new. Koster argues that all good games teach us something: first-person shooters teach us to aim, Tetris teaches us about spatial relationships, etc. The fun comes from the brain making new connections and becoming better at something.
In reading the book I was struck by how many times I found myself saying “Yes! That makes so much sense! How come things aren’t always explained like this?”
However, what I enjoyed the most about the book was Koster’s take on games as an art form, and our responsibilities as game creators. He makes some very convincing arguments about what games need to do to grow as a medium, most of which I agree completely with.
When he started talking about creator responsibility, that’s where I was the most interested. If you read Streaming Colour’s “mission statement”, it states “Streaming Colour was formed in 2008 by Owen Goss for the purposes of creating fun, non-violent, and creative video games.” I have worked on some violent games in the past, and I enjoyed working on them, but my time with that kind of game is done. When I started Streaming Colour, I put the words “non-violent” in there because I wanted to make it clear that I was making a choice not to contribute gratuitously violent games anymore. I’m done with that.
I sometimes wonder about my choice of words, because I do think that violence—like in film, books, fine art—has its place, when it’s used responsibly. So what I intended was that I wouldn’t make gratuitously violent game. Perhaps I should revise the wording.
Anyway, I’m getting side-tracked. The book is fantastic. If you’re designing games, have an interest in designing games, or are just curious about game design, you need to read this book.
One final note about the book: until recently the book was out of print, but it has been reprinted. If you’re interested in it, I’d get it sooner rather than later.
Beginning iPhone Development
The next book I want to talk about is “Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK” by Dave Mark and Jeff LaMarche (Amazon link):
I actually met Jeff LaMarche at 360|iDev and he’s a really cool, and extremely knowledgeable guy.
This is a fantastic book if you’re looking to get into iPhone development. I know that I’ve published a game already on the iPhone, so you might be wondering why I’m reading a book called “Beginning iPhone Development.” The answer is this: Dapple is 100% OpenGL-based. This means that I didn’t have to touch any of the iPhone User Interface stuff (all the handy widgets that make iPhone apps look like iPhone apps). However, for my next project, I want to use a bunch of the iPhone UI Kit, which means learning how it all works.
I’ve spent this week working my way through the tutorials in the book. I’m a little over half-way through the book and by the end of today I should have learned about everything I need to know to build the little app I have in mind.
The book is very clearly written and is entirely example based. In each chapter you’ll build a sample app from scratch. They walk you through how to use the Interface Builder, how to hook up your interface to your code, and then walk you through the code step-by-step. They also talk about common gotchas and things to look out for.
I’m extremely impressed with the book and I’m really glad that I bought it. Learning all of this stuff without this book would have taken me at least 2 or 3 times as long as it has. It has already been a worthy investment.
Dapple
Not a lot else to report…no news on the Dapple update yet, but I don’t expect to hear from Apple for at least another two or three days (if all goes well).
Owen
This is great, Owen. Thanks for posting up. I hadn’t heard about the game design book – I’ll have to check it out. Have you read through Daniel Cook’s blog over at LostGarden.com? He’s a former coworker of mine and perhaps one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and his blog is primarily about game design and analysis. Very interesting read.
And good luck with Apple on the approval process.
I had picked up the “Beginning iPhone Development” book a couple of weeks ago (I wrote about it in my blog – ottovondev.blogspot.com, even). It was a very good book and actually described something that I wanted to do in a very approachable way. I’ve picked up several other books and plan on writing up reviews of them when I get the time (the list is on my blog).
Thanks again for the great pointers.