aww out of print

I've also been reading this guy



It's pretty hardcore for the indie developer, but has a lot of information on creating a startup proposal and the many complicated aspects of the business end of it. I learned a lot about the different funding and publication models, and there's some interesting information on how portals and aggregator sites work, with a lot of diagrams to assist. It's very informative! Though for the indie I still the Indie Games Developer's Survival Guide is better.



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THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD

.. FOR ME TO POOP ON

I haven't hated a book ever as much as this one. I don't generally hate books. Books and literature are our friends. But this one brings out such an intense mega hate that I could shoot venemous x-rays from my eyes and burn it up in an explosion of pure loathing.

Many people seem to think Koster is the hot thing, but his book realllly was a disappointment. It might just be that I couldn't look past the drawings-- there's text on the left pages, and the right page is always a drawing by koster-- that looks like it was drawn by a kid-- and he goes off on this weird patronizing tangents about pascal's wager, improvisational jazz and personal stories. that sounds like it could be a good thing, but in this case, it's not-- raph talks down to the reader..

Most importantly, there's really not much theory about fun in there. Okay, he muses around a little bit, thinks about fun some, but it goes all over the place.. having read it, I don't feel like I learned anything bringing me closer to a grasp of what makes a game fun. The title is very misleading..

One of raph's "drawings". Literally half of the book contains these sketches, they're all terribly rendered and many of them feel like filler, and whenever there's women, they're putting down men or boys for playing games.


Enlightened view of the ladies. Learn a new word!
Arrows assist in comprehension. Rendered stunningly in pencil.


Raph's stunning cartoons make up half of the book!

I paid nearly 20 EUR for this. I will never forgive amazon for what they did to me, selling this book to me. Apparently i'm in the minority, though, because everyone else is raving about it. Seriously, everyone loves this thing except me. The most fun I theorize having with this book would be cutting out the pages and making origami. Or back-alley Tijuana style gambling fun: cut out the pages, lay them down on the floor of a box with a chicken in it, and bet on which page the chicken will pooop on.