Christopher Alexander was arguably the greatest genius of the twentieth century. This, his most famous book, is a guide to the way the human mind and body relate to the spaces around it. If you are making games that involve rooms, terrain, or locations, this book will provide a wealth of insights, especially if your games are social. Will Wright read this book, and it inspired him to create Sim City. I read it and suddenly understood how to layout Toontown. What will happen when you read it?

All game designers struggle with what it means to be creative, and whether they are doing it properly. What It Is and its companion book, Picture This are very personal guides to what it means to be a creative person, and are full of inspirational stories and very practical tips to create your best work and not get in your own way.

If your goal is to create board games, you really should read this book. If your goal is to create video games, you should also be creating boardgames. You get so much more game design experience creating a board game, because you can iterate so much more. Creating board games is a secret shortcut to becoming an experienced game designer, and this is the best book I know on how to do it well.

A tremendous amount of what makes a great videogame happens at the millisecond level. In this realm that is invisible to most, tiny changes make for enormous differences in the way a game feels. If you would master the secret rules that make for a game that people can’t put down because it just feels so good to play, you are wise to read this book.

I’m going to tell you a secret. The working title for my own book was Understanding Entertainment, because I was so inspired by reading Understanding Comics. This book will help you understand the strange relationship between visual art and storytelling that is central to videogame design. The book hardly mentions video games, but when you read it, the applications to games will be obvious to you. More importantly, this book is one of the best “explainers” you’ll ever encounter. If you can make a game tutorial that is 1/10 as lucid as Understanding Comics, you will have done your game a great service. I’m such a huge fan that I not only got Scott to sign my copy, I persuaded his whole family to sign it, too.