Inside Game Design is a collection of candid interviews with a group of *really* interesting, creative people – all of whom happen to be game designers.

The book features:

Bizarre Creations,Paul Carruthers, Free Radical, Freestyle, Frontier, Gastronaut Studios, Harmonix, Introversion, Media Molecule, Nabi Studios, Relentless, Takahashi, Torpex, Valve and a splendidly opinionated afterword from the brilliant Lorne Lanning.

Apparently:

“Despite being the fastest growing form of popular culture ever, videogames are seldom engaged with as a serious media form. “Inside Game Design” remedies this by offering a unique insight into the leading designers in the world today, examining, in a series of in-depth interviews, their influences and the processes that translate their vision into functioning game.Including industry legends such as David Braben and Lorne Lanning and new entrants to the field like Relentless and Keita Takahashi, the interviews contain candid opinions and practical advice for students about how to enter the industry. Full of colour artwork, the book includes process sketches from the production period, shots from the finished games themselves (character and environmental), studio photographs and marketing artwork. There is a detailed glossary, bibliography and index.”

Live

As part of the promotion for the book, I did a series of talks with various special guests. Here’s a pdf of the presentation from the ICA gig with Media Molecule. Apologies for the file size, but the interesting stuff is really in the detail of the images….

Inside Game Design(ers)_ICA (12mb)

Reviews

Spong said some nice things…

“Rattle off a list of your top five favourite game designers of all time and there is a very good chance that they are profiled in full, glossy glory in Inside Game Design (pictured) – a beautifully designed new book compiled by Iain Simons, creative director of Nottingham’s GameCity Festival. Inside Game Design profiles and interviews 20 top designers including, amongst others, Lorne Lanning, Keita Takahashi, Free Radical Design, David Braben, Bizarre Creations, Valve, Harmonix and Media Molecule. The book also charts each individual and group’s particular approaches to game design and development. The glossily printed concept and finished artwork, detailing the progression of ideas from sketches to final in-game content really is a thing of beauty. For anybody keen to know more about how these great games designers work, it’s a must. It also looks lovely on the coffee table – or next to the bog, should you not be posh enough to own a coffee table. Inside Game Design is published by Laurence King and will be available in October. We’ll be sure to remind you closer to the time, so that you can grab yourself a copy or pop it on your Christmas list.”

Christoph Mark in The Daily Yomiuri review was also very kind

“…Though shoot-’em-up games still dominate much of the market, the leaders of the video game industry are proving to be more than the pasty-faced geeks one might imagine behind the computers. They are instead people with a social consciousness, solid work ethic and a desire to improve their products and life in general…”

Business Week’s Matt Vella even goes as far to describe it as a “brilliant romp” in his review, which is one of the best compliments I’ve ever had about anything. Matt does however, continue the wide-spread habit of mis-spelling at least one of my names.

Amazon Canada gave me my very first ever reader review…

even EDGE magazine were nice…

Blimey reader, you should probably buy it.

100 Videogames

“Videogames are one of the most culturally, socially and economically significant, not to mention pervasive, media forms. The global videogames industry is worth billions of dollars and growing year on year as it releases yet more innovative products that synthesize cutting edge technology, ease of use, accessibility and, most importantly, fun. It is hardly surprising then that every day, millions of adults and children around the globe dedicate countless hours to exploring virtual worlds, assuming alternative identities and engaging in digital play. Yet for all this, there is relatively little critical discussion of videogames and they remain the poor relation of contemporary media criticism, leaving those new to videogames struggling to find information about key titles and the cognoscenti hungry for insight into their favourite titles. James Newman and Iain Simons’ guide provides a map of the most important games from the 1960s to the present day that will satisfy both novices and acolytes alike as it journeys through the most interesting, innovative and entertaining titles of the first forty years of videogames.”

The second book with James Newman, this collection of short pieces about at least 100 games was one of the last books to be published before BFI publishing was sold off. These events are not connected.
Available here

Reviews:

Popmatters

Daily Yomiuri

Difficult Questions About Videogames