Good books about video Games?

I've recently read Console Wars and Masters of Doom and was curious if anyone had any recommendations for similar books.

If you're interested in Sega, I would recommend Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA http://www.amazon.com/Service-Games-Rise-Enhanced-Edition/dp/1494288354#. I really enjoyed it, but that may have been a little bit of rose-colored nostalgia.

I'll definitely check that one out, seems like it could be interesting.

@locovoco: Yeah, that does seem pretty cool.

I enjoyed Arcade Mania! by Brian Ashcraft. Not lengthy, but neat none the less. I thought Masters of Doom was great. I also grabbed a book on my kindle called "The race for a new game machine". It's from someone who worked at IBM during the development of the 360 and ps3 and goes into the creating of the cpus for them (it also goes into the office politics happening behind the scenes)

• Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World (David Sheff)
• All Your Base Are Belong To Us (Harold Goldberg)
• Masters of Doom (David Kushner)
• Replay: The History of Video Games (Tristan Donovan)
• Service Games: The Rise and Fall of Sega (Sam Pettus)
• Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life (Chris Kohler)

If you want to take a break from the non-fiction, you should check out Ready Player One. Future, sci-fi, video game centered adventure.

I will second this. Great book.

I have indeed read this it was quite good. I'd also take more recommendations like this

I'll definitely check out the others that were listed above as well.

I thought Extra Lives by Tom Bissell was actually pretty interesting to look into what we get out of games like Fallout 3, LittleBigPlanet, and some others. It's not too long of a read, either.

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell

From Sun Tzu to Xbox by Ed Halter

Trigger Happy by Steven Poole

Game Over by David Sheff

Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts is pretty nice for point and click adventure fans, although it's now outdated since it was written before they shut down their internal development studio.

Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America by Jeff Ryan is a good one. I've listened to the Audible version of it a couple of times.

Jacked - David Kushner

The same guy who wrote Masters of Doom wrote it, swapping id for Rockstar. Great book.

Stuff worth Reading....

Revolutionaries at Sony: The Making of the Sony Playstation and the Visionaries Who Conquered the World of Video Games
Reiji Asakura

Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution
Dean Takahashi

The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon--The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World
Steven Kent

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
David Kushner

The First Quarter : A 25-year History of Video Games
Steven L. Kent

Stuff I have not read yet....that might be interesting

Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames
Ian Bogost (I own this damn book, but I have not read it yet...supposed to be interesting!)

The Video Game Theory Reader
Mark J.P. Wolf (Editor), Bernard Perron (I read half of this book,...but I don't remember it too well.)

Videogames: In the Beginning
Ralph H. Baer

The Race for a New Game Machine: Creating the Chips Inside the XBox 360 and the Playstation 3
David Shippy, Mickie Phipps


Stuff I think was poorly written or junk

Power-Up: How Japanese Video Games Gave the World an Extra Life
Chris Kohler
[ Just a really uninteresting Hodge-podge of stuff, it like it was written as 20 separated writing assignments he could have put up online. Give me a cohesive narrative and idea any time over this 'stitchup'.]

Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Videogames
Leonard Herman
[This book is heavy on facts, yet far too light on analysis. Who released what model at what price on which date is mostly what you get in this dull tome. Its an almanac, each chapter is composed of the events happened in a particular year. Then year after year, making up the whole book...another stitchup in my opinion.]

War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict
Corey Mead
[Not a bad book, just dull and probably not very informative if you play games. Nothing this books talks about will shock a gamer, or really provide new insight. Just, okay, run-of-the-mill stuff.]

My advice: Find & read "Revolutionaries at Sony" and "Opening the Xbox". They are both interesting and anyone at Giant Bomb SHOULD KNOW this stuff. Also, I would read both of the books above before I pick up "Console Wars" for sure.

Masters of Doom is my favorite, by far. Loved that book. Jacked, his follow up, was good, but not as good as Masters of Doom.

Ultimate History of Video Games is great too.

One that I recently read and it was really good was Of God and Games by Kevin Schut. It's got some stuff specific to religious folks but has a lot more just about the industry in general, video game violence (really balanced perspective I think), and it has good stuff on the positive power of video games.

If you are over the age of 30, Masters of Doom is amazing and a must-read. Having grown up in the same time frame the book covers and seeing the drama behind some of my favorite games was mindblowing.

If we're allowing fictional novels here, Snow Crash is considered one of the best modern scifi works. While I wouldn't go that far, it basically predicted what MMOs would be in 1990, and is partially responsible for what Second Life is. Thematically it had a big impact on Metal Gear Solid 2 as well. It's not amazing, it basically has no ending, and the creepiest romance I've ever read, but most of it's worth reading.

Yeah, I'd recommend this one too. There's a couple of typo's which can be confusing (which may have been corrected in later editions) but on the whole it's a really interesting look at the history of Nintendo.

Currently reading Console Wars and it's going great. I also recommend Extra Lives by Tom Bissell.

Good thread, though. I have to check some of these out.

Here's an interesting book that has recently been released this month:

The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers by John Szczepaniak

It mainly focuses on old-school Japanese games, and I'm pretty interested in checking it out.