StoryBundle, a site that provides bundles of DRM-free ebooks for which the buyer decides the price, is currently hosting a bundle it calls “The Video Game Bundle” that consists of ten ebooks/magazine issues about – as the name might suggest – video games. While you can pay any price to get the first seven ebooks, to nab the last three you'll have to stretch to $10. But given that those three are Videogames: In the Beginning by the father of video games and general legend Ralph H. Baer, The Making of Prince of Persia by (the guy who made Prince of Persia) Jordan Mechner, and 250 Indie Games You Must Play by Mike Rose, it's worth spending the extra.
Aside from those three books, you'll also get a couple of old issues of Kill Screen, namely issue 2 (“Back to School”) and issue 6 (“The Change Issue”). As far as ebooks are concerned, here's what else you'll get:
The Making of Karateka, also by Jordan Mechner, is about Mechner's experience with his first published game.
Confessions of the Game Doctor, by Bill Kunkel, tells “the untold stories” about Electronic Games magazine, the first magazine focused solely on electronic games, with anecdotes about the industry in general.
Constellation Games, by Leonard Richardson, is a fiction book about an alien invasion and the ways in which a young man who makes pony-themed games for kids for a living decides to respond.
Killing is Harmless, by our own Brendan Keogh, is a deep analysis of Spec Ops: The Line.
Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood, by Jamie Russell, is about the love/hate relationship between videogames and Hollywood, covering several anecdotes about people like Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick.
Does your love of video games stretch to a desire to read books about them?
