Part 3 of 4 of commentary on the ACM archives I have been looking at.
Category: books
Two readings of possible interest
The last couple of days have brought some interesting reads that weren’t announced on RAIF, so I’ll mention them here:
Trotting Krips’ review of Planetfall. I’ve never gotten around to playing this one myself.
Nick Montfort’s dissertation on nn, an IF development system he designed in the course of getting his doctorate at Penn. The dissertation runs to several hundred pages, so it’s not a light read, but I’d recommend a look to those interested in IF theory. Some of what he writes is fairly technical discussion of how his system works, and it’s difficult to judge its merits given that there aren’t any actual games written in it (as he admits himself); on the other hand, he also does a lot of theoretical definition of the different aspects of IF games.
Persuasive Games
Those who follow Grand Text Auto are presumably already aware of this, but Ian Bogost has published a new book on persuasive games. So far, I’ve only read the chapters available in PDF, but this looks like an extremely interesting discussion of the ways in which simulations can argue for a position or an idea about how a system works.
Theory of Fun For Game Design
Just added a review of Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun For Game Design to the site, plus some related thoughts about flOw, Super Columbine Massacre, etc., which will no doubt all seem much less topical in a couple of months. Still, there it is.
(Edited to add: Koster’s blog contains a recent thread of discussion about games and art, including links to some other reviews that are a little less IF-centric.)
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 