As noted, searches for books on video game critique often return results that do not fall under the categories of critique or analysis. This is not to say that these books are not notable or worthy of examination, but rather that they lack a critical approach and may be written for a different audience. Many of these are worthy of study but are outside the purview of this essay. Among the sorts of resources omitted are “strategy guides,” i.e., volumes that provide detailed game information, walk-throughs of storylines and missions, and exhaustive data to improve the reader’s ability to play the game alone or competitively.1
Also excluded are books on video game programming, which are written for everyone from beginners to experts. No Starch Press publishes such texts, including some on game design that are accessible to many audiences and levels. This essay generally avoids including textbooks, nor does it include works often used or incorporated into game design or study courses.
The games and science fiction/fantasy sections of bookstores abound with novelizations of video games, and these are excluded as are books focused on the visual art of games and game series rather than on the storytelling. Likewise games often inspire novels, and these are not part of this discussion.2 Video games have found their way into so-called coffee table books—hardcover books that focus on illustration and graphics rather than narrative and analysis and often lack scholarly apparatus—and these too are excluded from the discussion.3 Representation of games and game culture in fiction might be an area for further study, but it is not part of this essay.4 Finally, this essay does not examine the many journals (academic and mass-market) on video games nor does it include websites.
1. One example of this is the “Pokedex” series, which supports the Pokémon series games. The games feature hundreds of creatures, items, and combat strategies—and more content is added in each release in the series—and the “Pokedex” guides provide thorough data tables and summaries. A recent example is the information-dense 480-page Pokémon Sword, Pokémon Shield: The Official Galar Region Strategy Guide, by Jillian Nonaka et al. Also popular are the many print and ebook works on games such as Minecraft, an open-world game. The countless guides on this game treat everything from surviving early stages of the game to building large-scale, in-game machines and programs.
2. Two key examples demonstrate how this connection flows in both directions. The “Witcher” series of fantasy novels, starting with Andrzej Sapkowski’s Blood of Elves, was translated into may other formats, including a popular series of video games; by contrast, the “Halo” series of novels, starting with Eric Nylunds’s The Fall of Reach, originated with games and they elaborate on the world-building in the games and provide story and background not revealed in the games themselves.
3. One example is the three-volume Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive, which provides design drawings, game screenshots, histories, and memorable story and graphical elements games in the “Final Fantasy” series, including drawings by the illustrator Yoshitaka Amano. Another example is Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, which covers the history, artwork, design, and complicated interconnections of the many games in the “Legend of Zelda” series.
4. For example, Douglas Coupland’s novels Microserfs and JPod, which depict game creation from two perspectives—the optimism of the startup-driven 1990s and the toxicity attributed to game design in more recent years.