This week we’ll study book on game design, the power of uncertainty, the phenomenon of roguelikes, building better game experiences, some of the most influential game consoles, and more.
“When I wrote The Art of Computer Game Design way back in 1981, I really didn’t know what I was doing; I wrote the book as a way to sort out my thoughts on game design. That effort helped me solidify my philosophy of game design — and incidentally became a classic in the field. That book was a bunch of lucky guesses and inspired hunches. This book, by contrast, looks back on a career in game design spanning 25 years, and attempts to digest the lessons of that career. Back then, with so little experience to draw on, I was absolutely certain of my conclusions. This time around, I’m not so sure — but I’ve got some humdinger stories to tell. Will this book be a classic 25 years from now? Maybe so, maybe not, but one thing I’m sure of: 25 years from now, people will still be laughing over some of the crazy design misadventures I lived to tell about.”
“Twisty Little Passages looks at interactive fiction beginning with its most important literary ancestor, the riddle. Montfort then discusses Adventure and its precursors (including the I Ching and Dungeons and Dragons), and follows this with an examination of mainframe text games developed in response, focusing on the most influential work of that era, Zork. He then considers the introduction of commercial interactive fiction for home computers, particularly that produced by Infocom. Commercial works inspired an independent reaction, and Montfort describes the emergence of independent creators and the development of an online interactive fiction community in the 1990s. Finally, he considers the influence of interactive fiction on other literary and gaming forms. With Twisty Little Passages, Nick Montfort places interactive fiction in its computational and literary contexts, opening up this still-developing form to new consideration.”
“In 1980, computers were instruments of science and mathematics, military secrets and academia. Stern administrators lorded over sterile university laboratories and stressed one point to the wide-eyed students privileged enough to set foot within them: Computers were not toys. Defying authority, hackers seized control of monolithic mainframes to create a new breed of computer game: the roguelike, cryptic and tough-as-nails adventures drawn from text-based symbols instead of state-of-the-art 3D graphics. Despite their visual simplicity, roguelike games captivate thousands of players around the world.” From the author of the bestselling Stay Awhile and Listen series, Dungeon Hacks introduces you to the visionaries behind some of the most popular roguelikes of all time, and shows how their creations paved the way for the blockbuster video games of today—and beyond.