50 Books For Everyone In the Game Industry
: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3962&Itemid=2


<THEORY>
- Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Videogames, by Steven Poole
- Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
- Rules of Play, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
- Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, by Jesper Juul
- Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, by Ian Bogost

<DESIGN PRACTICE>
- Fundamentals of Game Design, by Ernest Adams and Andrew Rollings
- 21st Century Game Design, by Chris Bateman and Richard Boon
- Gender-Inclusive Game Design, by Sheri Graner Ray
- A Theory of Fun for Game Design, by Raph Koster
- Balance of Power: International Politics as the Ultimate Global Game, by Chris Crawford
- Digital Game-Based Learning, by Marc Prensky

<WRITING>
- Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames, edited by Chris Bateman
<GRAPHIC DESIGN>
- Creating the Art of the Game, by Matthew Omernick
- The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Visual Explanations and Envisioning Information, all by Edward Tufte
- Pause and Effect: The Art of Interactive Narrative, by Mark Stephen Meadows

<MUSIC AND AUDIO>
- The Fat Man on Game Audio: Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness, by George Alastair 'The Fat Man' Sanger
<ONLINE GAMES AND COMMUNITY>
- Developing Online Games: An Insider’s Guide, by Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Petrovsky
- Designing Virtual Worlds, by Richard Bartle
- Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities, by Amy Jo Kim

<THE HISTORY OF GAMES>
- The Oxford History of Board Games, by David Parlett
- The Ultimate History of Video Games, by Steven L. Kent
- Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age 1971 - 1984, by Van Burnham

<SOCIOLOGY>
- Joystick Nation, by J.C. Herz
- Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, by Gerard Jones
- What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, by James Paul Gee
- Everything Bad Is Good for You, by Steven Johnson
- From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games, edited by Justine Cassell and Henry Jenkins
- Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon, edited by Joseph Tobin
- The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, by Frederick P. Brooks

<PEOPLE, PROJECTS AND BUSINESSES>
- Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 2nd edition by Tom Demarco and Timothy Lister
- Postmortems from Game Developer, edited by Austin Grossman
- Game Over, Press Start to Continue, by David Sheff, with new material by Andy Eddy
- Masters of Doom, by David Kushner
- Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution by Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby
- The Xbox 360 Uncloaked by Dean Takahashi

<OTHER MEDIA AND USEFUL DISCIPLINES>
- Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud
- Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee
- A Pattern Language, by Christopher Alexander et al
- The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman

<DEEP BACKGROUND>
- Homo Ludens, by Johan Huizinga
- Man, Play, and Games, by Roger Caillois
- The Ambiguity of Play, by Brian Sutton-Smith
- Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, by Marshall McLuhan

<INSPIRATIONS>
- The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, by various authors
- The Hunt for Red October, by Tom Clancy
- Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces
- Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, by Janet H. Murray