Are you looking to delve deeper into game history and the study of game culture? Then look no further than the Big List of Books About Games.
Obviously, the Big List of Books About Games is not a list of every book ever published about video games. But it’s certainly a good place to start… and there is a lot of options about exactly where you could begin.
History buffs would do well to begin with Steven Kent’s The Ultimate History of Video Games, a book that provides a pretty good overview of everything from Pong through the beginnings of the PS2/GameCube/Xbox era. David Sheff’s Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children fills in a lot of the gaps with a very detailed account of Nintendo’s rise from the early 1980s up through the dawn of the Nintendo 64. And Tristan Donovan’s Replay: The History of Video Games travels across the pond to cover the same timeframe with an additional focus on the game development industry in Europe.
If you want to go way back, David Sudnow’s Pilgrim in the Microworld is a wild game-specific study about how one non-player got sucked into an obsession with video games. Out of print for decades, the book was republished by Boss Fight Books in 2020.
Closer to now, Jason Schreier’s Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made and the anthology The State of Play: Creators and Critics on Video Game Culture will give you a painfully accurate picture of what game development and game culture are like today.
I would also strongly recommend David Kushner’s Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, especially if you ever wanted to know more about the creation of Doom or the diverging career paths of John Romero and John Carmack.
With hundreds of choices like this, the Big List of Books About Games is currently split into four categories (and like these titles, some will be highlighted as “Recommended” picks):
▶ Commentary, Criticism, and Cultural Studies
▶ History (Before 2000)
▶ History (2000 – Present)
▶ Memoirs
The Big List of Books About Games will be updated on a regular basis, but if there’s a title you know I’m missing, please let me know through the Contact page.