If you’ve ever been frustrated at a developer for repeatedly delaying a launch, or launching a game with bugs, or not updating a game quickly enough, read this book.

Technology journalist Jason Schreier takes us behind the scenes of game development, showing the sheer effort, emotion and often panic that goes into the process.

Photograph: Harper Blood, Sweat and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games are Made – Jason Schreier This book, subtitled Gender in the Modern Horror Film, about the psychology and gender dynamics of horror entertainment, is focused on movies, but as I’ve referenced it in almost everything I’ve ever written about Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Dead Space, it deserves to be here. It chimed perfectly with the dawn of online gaming, internet forums and epic role-playing adventures and is still a fascinating, almost game-like experience today. I first read Stephenson’s dense, riveting tale of hacking, computer science and Sumerian mythology when I started working on video game magazine Edge in 1995. Dimopoulos is an urban planner and a designer of game worlds, and his insights into the architecture of play spaces will make you appreciate familiar games in whole new ways. Photograph: Unbound Virtual Cities – Konstantinos DimopoulosĮssentially an architectural travelogue of imagined places, Virtual Cities: An Atlas and Exploration of Video Game Cities takes us on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite cityscapes in games history, from the blocky ruins of Ant Attack’s Antescher to the cyberpunk New York of Deus Ex.

Why do video games says pray tell