I purchased The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design to aid me in writing this game of mine. It’s nice and to the point - not too convoluted in its description of the writing process and writing methods. The book sheds light on the specifics of writing for games as opposed to other media, as well as a bunch of recommended methods to go about constructing narrative through tension, reward, dialogue, theme, character etc.

Thumbs up so far

To give myself a better knowledge of game design and development, I purchased “Introduction to Game Development”, edited by Steve Rabin. It’s a huge book attempting to cover all aspects of game development, from story and character to programming methods. Each chapter is written by a different industry veteran; a great way to structure a book I thought. A handful of different perspectives and areas of expertise are much preferred (at least for such a broad book) over one man’s ideas on making a game.

I’m learning a lot, especially on the topic of “natural funativity” — the different types of fun people have whilst playing games and why — and the structure of games (pacing, difficulty, building a consistent world etc.) However, despite having a fairly comprehensive section on writing for video games (they even use LeChuck of Monkey Island fame to illustrate a point), I feel I still want more on this particular subject! I think I’ll buy another book that is more focused on the writing side of things.