I recently finished reading Doom Guy by John Romero and it's one of the most interesting books i've read on the last years. What are some other books that one should read about video games and the history of gaming?
If you haven't read "Masters of Doom" then that's probably the next step -- but I do consider "Doom Guy" better, in the sense that John Romero gave a much fuller description of ID's early years -- I think it matters more for Indies these days than the later years (post-Quake).
I'm looking for some books describing the process of Console hardware development -- e.g. why did the team decide to pick this chip, why the architecture, etc. Does anyone have any idea?
Have you checked out https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/, it's a great write up of various consoles and the author does go into some context/history behind each console he has covered.
I really enjoyed Console Wars by Blake J. Harris. It doesn't go into very deep technical details but there were some details about how some of the technical decisions were made.
And it was very nostalgic read for anyone growing up with video games in 80s and 90s.
Responding to you because Masters of Doom is the right answer here. It shares a lot of details from Doom Guy, but gives a more complete timeline and better views, from multiple sides. It's a book that just makes you want to hack a game together. That's coming from someone who wasn't old enough to idolize the devs when they hit celebrity status.
Other books I really enjoyed:
- Spelunky by Derek Yu: Written by the sole developer of the game. Covers idea to development to release. Really captures a nice feeling of indie solo game making.
- The WoW Diary: Focused development 'journals' from one of the WoW level designers. Has a lot of original concept art and early alpha images. Goes over a lot of history and is just a fun read with some good insight.
- Half-Lift 2: Raising the Bar: Concept art, journals, iterations, and details from devs and HL2. Simply a fantastic insight into what they went through progressing from Gold Source to the Source Engine. Where Masters of Doom gives the written history of Doom, this book gives the nuts and bolts of HL2 and CSS. It is highly sought after by fans and developers alike and can be hard to come by.
Although it's part art book and part text features: Every Day is Play (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamepaused/everyday-is-...), but because it has been funded through Kickstarter and published only once at the time it could be a rare find (although a quick Google search showed me that some copies are being sold through the likes of Ebay)
I read a few titles from https://bossfightbooks.com/ . As it happens much, I read about games I did not actually play. It was a nice reading though. The Majora's Mask and Spelunky books were particularly sweet, and encouraged me to watch playthroughs of both games (which I still haven't played).
I’m only mentioning the ones I haven’t seen mentioned here so far
The Ultimate History of Video Games - Steven L. Kent - loved this.
Sid Meier’s Memoir was good.
And not really a must read but I enjoyed David Kushner’s Jacked about the Grand Theft Auto guys.
I'm looking for some books describing the process of Console hardware development -- e.g. why did the team decide to pick this chip, why the architecture, etc. Does anyone have any idea?