Month: September 2017

Scott Rogers “Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design”

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Although I have worked in the video game industry for years, I never thought I was any kind of a game designer. But it is impossible to avoid all this knowledge after all these years, especially if you have a lot of great professionals around you. This is why you want to know more about a big part of your job and entire life.

One of my colleagues recommended me to read ‘Level Up!’ as one of the best ‘manuals’ of game design.

The book isn’t just a game design tutorial, it is a great handbook. The author explains every type of aspect of game creation, and give a lot of examples of how to document it and keep ideas.

One can say that it most likely too boring to read a step-by-step manual, but there is so much humour and dozens of great artwork, created by the author himself in a very ironic and even cartoonish style. This makes the book easy to read, almost like a comic graphic novel.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in game design. And if it is a part of your job then you have to have it, the book is like a Bible for every game designer (in the words of my colleagues, game designers).

Robert Sutton “The No Asshole Rule”

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The book is quite interesting. First, the author isn’t afraid to call things by their real names, without falling into political correctness. Second, through several examples, he shows why having assholes in a company is harmful.

The essence of the book is almost fully captured in its title: just don’t work with assholes. In the first few chapters, it seemed like there wouldn’t be much more than examples of why it’s bad to work with them. Yes, there’s a fair amount of fluff, but there are still valuable insights.

The author breaks down what makes a “certified asshole” in his view. This helps apply the criteria to anyone, making it easier to understand how bad a person can be for business and personal well-being.

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Grigory Belykh, Leonid Panteleev “The Republic of FeDoSh”

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It’s hard to believe that this book is almost a hundred years old! Yet, you don’t really feel that in the emotions of the characters. Sure, there’s a slight sense of “old-fashionedness,” that these are clearly not modern kids, but overall, you only remind yourself that it’s a century-old book.

To start from the beginning: I had wanted to read this book for a long time. My parents had traded scrap paper for it back in Soviet times, but I first saw the movie based on the book. I enjoyed the film. That’s when I decided that I should read the original. However, it took me almost twenty years to finally do it.

Even so, I was hesitant to begin. You know how some books seem to have their own right time? What you enjoyed 10-15 years ago might now, upon rereading, feel dull or even disappointing. That’s exactly what I was afraid of—that this book might resonate perfectly with teenagers but wouldn’t hit the same way in adulthood.

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