Here are some things I (and I know others) have struggled with. I think the web is exploding with resources and information, so I don’t necessarily think we need to explain what a prototype is. There’s better places elsewhere to learn things about UX, but I think we could provide some good resources for not just people new to UX but everyone else too. I’m coming at this from what I wished I would have access to when I was trying to get into the field. I know that /u/uirockstar has some good walls of text that probably should be included as well. Feel free to suggest any changes to what I have here.

I really want to begin a career in UX/UI. What do I do?

Well, first it’s important to know that UX and UI are not synonymous. While many job postings combine them, UI is a subset of UX, just as research and information architecture are. UI is still important and if you can do both, you do increase your value. While many see UX as a research field at its core, the UX/UI title implies that it’s only about creating pretty things.

The first step is learning more about the field, which brings us to…

What kind of education do I need?

If you are still in school, there are more places recently that are offering courses in human-computer interaction. You can even try to create your own internships. There are very few UX specific schools, though they are starting to pop up, like Center Centre and General Assembly.

Yeah, yeah, that’s great. But I already graduated, so where do I start?

Any focus on people or technology can act as a solid foundation for learning UX. Because there has never been a set entrance path into the field, UX roles are filled with people from many different backgrounds. The most common degrees for those in the field though are design, psychology, communications, English, and computer science. link

There are a number of people in the field who are self-taught. There are tons of books, blogs, and designers (here are some helpful resources) which provide enough UX stuff to keep us all busy. When I first started reading about it, I quickly got overwhelmed because there was so much information available and most of it was intended for those who already had a pretty good grasp on things. The Hipper Element’s crash courses in UX and user psychology are great places to get a fairly quick overview.

There are books like The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug that make for great first books.

UX Mastery has a great eBook for getting started, appropriately titled Getting Started in UX. Kevin Nichols’ UX for Dummies is both very readable, yet detailed. You can even buy the eBook if you don’t want people on the bus to think you’re a “dummy.”

Lastly, Fred Beecher has a very extensive Amazon list of recommended UX books, depending on what area you are looking to learn more about.

Great. I’ve read a whole bunch of stuff and have a pretty good idea how UX works. Now how do I get someone to hire me so I can gain experience?

Hey, easy there. While, yes, there are lots of UX jobs out there, very few are entry level and not many employers will hire someone who has only read about it and not actually done it. You can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get experience without a job. I know. Frustrating, right?

You have to prove that you can do it. One way to do this is site redesigns.

Go find a website that lacks in it’s user experience and figure out how to fix it. Maybe it’s a small business down the street from you or maybe it’s a feature on eBay you think could be better. Redesigning sites is a good way to practice a process and make mistakes on your own time. If you can involve the owner from that small business down the street, that’s even better because then you can get a sense of the customers (users) that you will be designing for.

Once you have done this, you have (some) experience! Start a portfolio and add to it!

But I have a resume. Why do I need a portfolio?

Resumes are great. But resumes won’t get you a job starting out. It’s a million times more effective to show potential employers what you have done, rather than showing them a resume showcasing that you are a team player and proficient in Microsoft Office. But you should still have a resume that outlines your UX skills.

But I’ve never worked in UX! What should I put on my resume?

You don’t need to put all of your old jobs on your resume if they are unrelated to the field. Most places still want to see some work history so they know you haven’t been living in a cave for the last four years, but they don’t care about how you sold vacuum cleaners or trained circus horses. Maybe you can relate some crossover UX skills to your previous work.

Back to portfolios. They are a lot like elementary math class in that you want to show your work. Potential employers are much more interested in how you made a design decision rather than the final result. If your portfolio just has a bunch of fancy wireframes, that doesn’t tell them how you took specific personas into account and you are simply showing them something that looks pretty. And just because it looks pretty doesn’t always mean it makes sense.

Okay. I have a portfolio with a few unsolicited site redesigns in it.

Congratulations! But I have some bad news. Are you sitting down?

No one wants to hire you yet. You haven’t worked on any “actual” projects that showed how your UX skillz helped a business. I know I suggested you do site redesigns to get practice and you should because that is work you can take to a nonprofit or another small business and say, “here are some trial runs that I’ve done that prove I know what I’m doing and now I can help you for free in exchange for adding it to my portfolio.”

They’ll probably be skeptical and say, “hmmm… I don’t think my website needs this newfangled user experience you speak of and—wait did you say free?”

You both get something out of it and you’re doing it pro bono, which relieves you the pressure of making one tiny mistake. (There is a great site called Catchafire that matches non-profits all over the country with people looking to donate their time and skills.)

Once you have a portfolio displaying your work and some experience, start applying! But there is one more aspect that goes into getting hired and that is the people who will hire you.

Ugh, but isn’t networking just using people for my own professional gain?

I had this same mindset and it probably delayed my entrance into the field. I wanted to rely only on the quality of my work and trusted the rest would follow. I avoided networking and meeting people in the field because I didn’t want it to seem like I was only mooching for a job.

But the fact is people are altruistic in nature and like helping others. Many people also enjoy talking about themselves, and those are the two main principles of an informational interview. You’ll also find that people are excited to help others get started since they remember how difficult it was (see: this blog post).

It wasn’t until I started getting those informational interviews and talking with people at UXPA and MeetUp groups that I learned another side of UX, but also got more familiar with more hiring managers or those that knew them. Whenever possible, people will hire those they know and like. Until you get out and start shaking hands and kissing babies, you will be just another faceless name in a stack of resumes.

Meeting with recruiters/staffing agencies is also a good route as they make money by finding you a job, so they have a vested interest in giving you constructive criticism.

I've heard that you have to live in a big city to get a job in UX.

Move. Just kidding. But while it’s true that larger cities like New York, San Francisco, and Seattle are full of opportunities, there are plenty of other places around the country that have jobs. Here are the top 20. If you live in a tiny city, expect a tougher time finding a position.

Okay, I got an interview. How do I not mess this up?

Some great advice is to go all UX on your preparation and treat the interviewer like a user.

.......to be continued.



Blogs:

• Boxes and Arrows
  
• The Hipper Element
  
• UX for the Masses
  
• UX Mag
  
• UX Mastery
  
• UX Matters
  
• UX Movement
  
  
  Other:
  
  
• uxdesign.cc: Methods and Deliverables
  
• CogLode.com: behavioral and consumer psychology
  
• Good UI: Best practices shown in a “don’t do this, do that” way
  
• UX Mastery’s HUGE list of resources
  
• UXarchive: iOS user flows
  
• iOS Human Interface Guidelines

I've posted this before but I'll repost it here:

Now in terms of the question that you ask in the title - this is what I recommend:

Job Interview Prep

1. Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions
   
2. Programming Interviews Exposed: Coding Your Way Through the Interview
   
3. Introduction to Algorithms
   
4. The Algorithm Design Manual
   
5. Effective Java
   
6. Concurrent Programming in Java™: Design Principles and Pattern
   
7. Modern Operating Systems
   
8. Programming Pearls
   
9. Discrete Mathematics for Computer Scientists
   
   

   Junior Software Engineer Reading List
   

   
   

   Read This First
   

   
   

10. Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware
    
    

    Fundementals
    

    
    

11. Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction
    
12. Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art
    
13. Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach
    
14. Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
    
15. Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software
    
16. Perfect Software: And Other Illusions about Testing
    
17. Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application
    
    

    Understanding Professional Software Environments
    

    
    

18. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game
    
19. Software Project Survival Guide
    
20. The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky
    
21. Debugging the Development Process: Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams
    
22. Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules
    
23. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

24. Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency
    
25. Against Method
    
26. The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
    
    

    History
    

    
    

27. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
    
28. Computing Calamities: Lessons Learned from Products, Projects, and Companies That Failed
    
29. The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management
    
    

    Mid Level Software Engineer Reading List
    

    
    

    Read This First
    

    
    

30. Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth
    
    

    Fundementals
    

    
    

31. The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers
    
32. Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
    
33. Solid Code
    
34. Code Craft: The Practice of Writing Excellent Code
    
35. Software Craftsmanship: The New Imperative
    
36. Writing Solid Code
    
    

    Software Design
    

    
    

37. Head First Design Patterns: A Brain-Friendly Guide
    
38. Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
    
39. Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
    
40. Domain-Driven Design Distilled
    
41. Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design
    
42. Design Patterns in C# - Even though this is specific to C# the pattern can be used in any OO language.
    
43. Refactoring to Patterns
    
    

    Software Engineering Skill Sets
    

    
    

44. Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems
    
45. Software Factories: Assembling Applications with Patterns, Models, Frameworks, and Tools
    
46. NoEstimates: How To Measure Project Progress Without Estimating
    
47. Object-Oriented Software Construction
    
48. The Art of Software Testing
    
49. Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software
    
50. Working Effectively with Legacy Code
    
51. Test Driven Development: By Example
    
    

    Databases
    

    
    

52. Database System Concepts
    
53. Database Management Systems
    
54. Foundation for Object / Relational Databases: The Third Manifesto
    
55. Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design
    
56. Data Access Patterns: Database Interactions in Object-Oriented Applications
    
    

    User Experience
    

    
    

57. Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
    
58. The Design of Everyday Things
    
59. Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications
    
60. User Interface Design for Programmers
    
61. GUI Bloopers 2.0: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos
    
    

    Mentality
    

    
    

62. The Productive Programmer
    
63. Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change
    
64. Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming
    
65. Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering
    
    

    History
    

    
    

66. Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software
    
67. New Turning Omnibus: 66 Excursions in Computer Science
    
68. Hacker's Delight
    
69. The Alchemist
    
70. Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages
    
71. The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
    
    

    Specialist Skills
    

    
    In spite of the fact that many of these won't apply to your specific job I still recommend reading them for the insight, they'll give you into programming language and technology design.
    
    

72. Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBM PC
    
73. Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets
    
74. Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot: Rules for C and C++ Programming
    
75. The C++ Programming Language
    
76. Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
    
77. More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
    
78. More Effective C#: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#
    
79. CLR via C#
    
80. Mr. Bunny's Big Cup o' Java
    
81. Thinking in Java
    
82. JUnit in Action
    
83. Functional Programming in Scala
    
84. The Art of Prolog: Advanced Programming Techniques
    
85. The Craft of Prolog
    
86. Programming Perl: Unmatched Power for Text Processing and Scripting
    
87. Dive into Python 3
    
88. why's (poignant) guide to Ruby

Hey there, I'm a game designer working in AAA and I agree with /u/SuaveZombie that you'll probably be better off with a degree in CS. BUT... don't give up on wanting to be a designer!

 

You should realize that it's not giving up on your dream at all, in fact, it's great advice for how to reach that dream. A designer with an engineering background is going to have a lot more tools at their disposal than one who doesn't.

 

Design is way more than just coming up with a bunch of cool, big ideas. You need to be able to figure out all the details, communicate them clearly to your teammates, and evaluate how well they're working so you can figure out how to make something people will enjoy. In fact, working on a big game often feels like working on a bunch of small games that all connect.

Take your big game idea and start breaking it down into all the pieces that it will need to be complete. For example, GTA has systems for driving and shooting (among many other things). Look at each of those things as its own, smaller game. Even these "small" parts of GTA are actually pretty huge, so try to come up with something as small as possible. Like, super small. Smaller than you think it needs to be. Seriously! You'll eventually be able to make big stuff, but it's not the place to start. Oh, and don't worry if your first game(s) suck. They probably will, and that's fine! The good stuff you make later will be built on the corpses of the small, crappy games you made while you were learning.

 

If you're truly interested in design, you can learn a lot about usability, player psychology, and communication methods without having to shell out $17k for a degree. Same goes for coding (there are tons of free online resources), though a degree will help you get in the door at companies you might be interested in and help provide the structure to keep you going.

 

Here's some books I recommend. Some are specific to games and some aren't, but are relevant for anything where you're designing for someone besides yourself.

 

• Universal Principles of Design

• The Design of Everyday Things

• Rules of Play

• The Art of Game Design This and the one below are great books to start with.

• A Theory of Fun This is a great one to start with.

• Game Feel

• Depending on the type of game you're making, some info on level design would be useful too, but I don't have a specific book to recommend (I've found pieces of many books and articles to be useful). Go play through the developer commentary on Half-Life 2 or Portal for a fun way to get started.

 

Sounds like you're having a tough time, so do your best to keep a positive attitude and keep pushing yourself toward your goals. There's nothing to stop you from learning to make games and starting to make them on your own if that's what you really want to do.

Good luck, work hard!

A Word of Caution on Inspiration Galleries

Seeking inspiration (ideas) is perfectly acceptable, but it must be done so cautiously. Too often, people fall into the trap of simply copying the sources of inspiration because it looked nice.

Instead, it's helpful to study the source of inspiration. Which components are interesting? Why were they used? What problem was the designer attempting to solve with them? Once you understand why those components were used, then you are better positioned to decide if they help solve your design problem.

It's also helpful to remember that no two design problems are the same. Sure, you're a bank and we're a bank, but we have different needs, target different audiences, have different value propositions, different brands, and so on. Thus, our design solutions will necessarily differ.

Some Helpful Resources

As for helpful resources, I would start with a video from Flint McGlaughlin on the inverted marketing funnel. You're probably already familiar with the funnel concept from marketing, but he describes it as fulfilling a sequence of "micro yes" points. If you have a good understanding of how the user moves through these "micro yes" moments, then it can help you decide where to choose and place elements on a page. For example, should your call-to-action be above the fold? Do you need pictures? Are stock photos okay? And so on.

Going more in-depth, I would recommend looking to The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett. You can find lecture videos from him on YouTube covering the ideas.

Another book on the essential reading list is Don't Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug. It's a fantastic book on usability and user experience.

For a slightly more graphic design bent, although still applicable, I would recommend The Non-Designer's Design Book by Robin Williams. It will help you understand the basic components of graphic design which can be applied to web design.

What all these resources do is give you a basic framework through which you can make better design decisions.

Design is fundamentally about problem solving. You are not creating a design simply for the sake of the "design." You are creating a design to accomplish some goal. This is true of graphic designer, web design, user experience design, interaction design, and even industrial design.

> I also like these discussions! This is actually a subject of some interest to me, because people have been complaining about a lack of board game content as true critique rather than just more "consumer oriented" reviews.

If you're interested in the theory of games (not to be confused with game theory, which is an interesting type of math), then look into "ludology".

> Have you played My First Orchard?

I've never heard of it. But it sounds like you make choices and can get better at the game, much like tic-tac-toe, so I would call it a game. Interestingly enough, from a mathematical, complexity tree point of view, tic-tac-toe, checkers, and chess are also essentially equivalent. Some are more complex than others, but at the end of the day there's a branching tree of moves, you take turns moving through this tree, and at the end of some branches, a player wins. We consider tic-tac-toe to be trivial and not worth our time because our brains are able to solve it. But checkers and chess are just as theoretically solvable, we're just not smart enough.

> What about a game where you roll 100d6 and your opponent rolls 100d6.

I guess. I'm a fan of extreme examples proving stuff. It's an easy way to see if your theory holds up or not. I'd argue that's a pretty poor game, but it's not technically any different than any number of games. Take MTG for example, given a specific shuffle of each player's deck, you could say one person has a 100% chance to win. For most shuffles though, it's probably a lot closer to 50%. In those cases, your choices matter.

> Also, as for a game needing "goals," doesn't this eliminate many "sandbox" style games (whether video games or sandboxy narrative games like RPGs)?

It does. Sandbox style games are often considered toys and not games. Sim City has been famously described by Will Wright as a toy and not a game. If you're looking at the dressing instead of the content, a lot of not-games become games. Toys are fine. Toys are good. Nothing wrong with toys. There are a lot of cool toys where you learn a lot of really useful stuff and given self-imposed goals, you can learn stuff about them and reality. But they're not games.

> Also, I'm not sure if I agree that activities that aren't about learning are not fun? Can't something be fun because it's physical (e.g., thrill rides)? Because it's nostalgic?

This is potentially a weakness of the argument and might be enough to prove my radical stance false. But the idea is that all of those things involve learning of some sort. It starts to blur the lines between learning and experiencing new things though for sure.

> Finally, is there nothing to say about the fact that S&L is routinely referred to as a game?

There is. And words are used differently in different contexts, with different people, to mean different things. If we're just speaking colloquially, then yeah, anything on the same shelf at Target can be considered a game. But if we're using these terms to actually mean something so we can have an intellectual, academic discussion about games, it's useful to differentiate between toys and competitions and games. If our terminology can't distinguish between Chess and Lego in some definitive manner, we're going to have trouble coming up with any interesting conclusions. I don't mean to assign any quality to the term game, there are a lot of really great non-games out there. We already differentiate between different types of board games. People will often refer to something as multi-player solitaire. Could we not refer to these as competitions? And of course when speaking colloquially, it doesn't really do to categorize Dominion as a card based competition instead of a card-game.

Raph Koster's blog has a bunch of good content: https://www.raphkoster.com/ But I would start with his book A Theory of Fun. Apparently there are some PDFs here and here, 10 years later. It's a super easy to ready book, but really insightful. I highly recommend it. It looks like maybe the PDFs are a subset of the book. Let me know what you think.

Thanks, I share your feeling. The first time I visited this subreddit I was looking for similar posts. I wondered how people could combine Reddit with their busy life or how they would be able to indeed create stuff by at the same time consuming so much. I could not find any of this idea at that time and I just kept surfing until a few months ago when I started frequenting Reddit less and less.

In the meantime I did not stop thinking about it, read The Shallows by Nicholas Carr and wondered how people could combine all this easy, distracting input (Reddit, Facebook, just surfing in general) with bigger things that require no distractions or 'alone time', like reading, learning a new language, or in your case hoolahooping with fire. My conclusion was that you can't. If you want to go for it, you just have to go for it.

Of course you can combine Reddit with taking a test, but you can not combine it with finishing cum laude. I also realised though that this does not count for most people, they can combine these things, but they do not have the intention to become the new Einstein. It is a whole different discussion if this should even be a personal goal, but my idea was that these new Einsteins are so into the achieving of their dream that this would be really hard to combine with the great entertainment part of the internet and our society. It requires an opt-out, you will have to be an einzelganger at some times and that is exactly what what internet tries to prevent.

You worded this very well in your statement and I agree wholeheartedly. As you can see I'm still on Reddit but not for long. The past few months when I paid Reddit a visit I noticed that the lesser frequency of my visits also made me see the content better. And although I'm subscribed to a whole lot of interesting subreddits and described from all these fun things, I still noticed that I did not need all of this. It gave me a sense of passivity that I should not want in my life.

Nevertheless there are a lot pro-arguments to this website and I see that as well. Because I'm living in the Netherlands, I do not necessarily have to suffer some of the ills that the United States is made of. I can really understand that you need some inspiration of sanity if you live in a small conservative town where everyone is the personal friend of Jesus. So yeah, Reddit should inspire you, but maybe more as in a caravanserai. You meet a lot of new and interesting people, have a good night's sleep and travel on. Staying there also means that you will not arrive at your destination.

The people who say that you should do everything in moderation do not see that this is really hard for some people, but these are the same people that will give you some of the most interesting stuff. They can immerse themselves, lose themselves in Reddit or alike, but if they learn to use this energy in a more enduring way they can use it to write books, build houses or govern countries (just some examples).

In my view it works just like torrents. You have the seeders, who make things. They put in the effort. They show themselves once they finish their product. Their creations will surprise or disappoint. Then, there are the leechers. They wait. They need the seeders and they will criticize or praise the products of the seeder. Most of the time a seeder also leeches, but a lot of leechers tend to forget that they can also be seeders.

TL;DR: Reddit should inspire you, but maybe more as in a caravanserai. You meet a lot of new and interesting people, have a good night's sleep and travel on. Staying there also means that you will not arrive at your destination. Just like torrents, the society consists of seeders and leechers. The OP decided he wanted to be a seeder, I as well.

From Theory of Fun for Game Design by Ralph Koster:

> Human beings are all about progress. We like life to be easier. We’re lazy that way. We like to find ways to avoid work. We like to find ways to keep from doing something over and over. We dislike tedium, sure, but the fact is that we crave predictability. Our whole life is built on it. Unpredictable things are stuff like drive-by shootings, lightning bolts that fry us, smallpox, food poisoning—unpredictable things can kill us! We tend to avoid them. We instead prefer sensible shoes, pasteurized milk, vaccines, lightning rods, and laws. These things aren’t perfect, but they do significantly reduce the odds of unpredictable things happening to us.
>
> And since we dislike tedium, we’ll allow unpredictability, but only inside the confines of predictable boxes, like games or TV shows. Unpredictability means new patterns to learn, therefore unpredictability is fun. So we like it, for enjoyment (and therefore, for learning). But the stakes are too high for us to want that sort of unpredictability under normal circumstances. That’s what games are for in the first place—to package up the unpredictable and the learning experience into a space and time where there is no risk.
>
> The natural instinct of a game player is to make the game more predictable because then they are more likely to win.
>
> This leads to behaviors like “bottom-feeding,” where a player will intentionally take on weaker opponents under the sensible logic that a bunch of sure wins is a better strategy than gambling it all on an iffy winner-take-all battle. Players running an easy level two hundred times to build up enough lives so that they can cruise through the rest of the game with little risk is the equivalent of stockpiling food for winter: it’s just the smart thing to do.
>
> This is what games are for. They teach us things so that we can minimize risk and know what choices to make. Phrased another way, the destiny of games is to become boring, not to be fun. Those of us who want games to be fun are fighting a losing battle against the human brain because fun is a process and routine is its destination.
>
> So players often intentionally suck the fun out of a game in hopes they can learn something new (in other words, find something fun) once they complete the task. They’ll do it because they perceive it (correctly) as the optimal strategy for getting ahead. They’ll do it because they see others doing it, and it’s outright unnatural for a human being to see another human being succeeding at something and not want to compete.
>
> All of this happens because the human mind is goal driven. We make pious statements like “it’s the journey, not the destination,” but that’s mostly wishful thinking. The rainbow is pretty and all, and we may well enjoy gazing at it, but while you were gazing, lost in a reverie, someone else went and dug up the pot of gold at the end of it.
>
> Rewards are one of the key components of a successful game activity; if there isn’t a quantifiable advantage to doing something, the brain will often discard it out of hand.(...)

Don't be suckered by a "Game Design" program. There are VERY few good ones. Most of them....as in, 99% of them...are rip-offs.

Learn programming, 3D-modeling, or animation. Pick one that you're more interested in and then full-speed ahead. These will make you useful in more than just game development roles, thus helping you in the future when you have trouble landing a game dev job. At least you'll still be doing something you like in the meantime, and still building your skill in that area. Many really popular game designers have specialties outside of just "Design". Some are excellent programmers, some are artists, some have excellent business skills (really good at project management), and some are brilliant story-writers. Most game design positions are not entry-level, because you REALLY have to know what you are doing, before someone will trust you enough to let you touch the design. The only real way to prove that you are actually a good game designer is by having games to show off. That proves that you have some idea of the design process and know how to maintain a game from start to finish. This is HARD.

Some like to say that these degree programs for game design help them by giving them the incentive to push through and finish their stuff, otherwise, they might not have the motivation. Well, that's very problematic, because that means that you will not be the type of person who can finish a game. Game development requires you to be highly self-driven.

Most of what "Game Design" programs teach you can be learned by picking up a few game design books and making your own games (alot of them, too). Game design is learned by making games, not by having a professor tell you about it. You have enough mentors in the game development community already. They will always be there to critique what you do and give you tips on how to improve your work. Pick up a couple of books like The Art of Game Design and Designing Games. You can look at other books in whatever other area you want to master and just get started on making games. Turn off your console and just get started. Start small. Make very simple, basic games to start off with (B.A.S.I.C.). It's about learning the process first. Do that while reading a ton of highly-detailed game postmortems online. Just learn the process. THAT will be your real education.

And finally, start working your way up to putting together a portfolio. Portfolios speak much louder than a resume (although, a resume is still important). And that doesn't mean having a bunch of "Game Design docs". Games. Not docs. Games. Then build up your confidence and hook up with a team, so you can fight your way together to the end of making a complete game. (this may be one of the only valuable things that a game design program can provide you out of the box, i.e., a team that you are forced to work on a game with)

The single most important tool you will ever have is discipline. No degree will be able to top that. Give up the idea of being a hardcore gamer, because you are now going to need to become a VERY disciplined person. You're going to need it.

Finally: Don't forget to have fun. Good luck! :)

Fellow enterprise developer turned manager here. Me and my cohort are about to release our first title. It was developed using .NET/C#.

AMA. :)

I'll start with the questions you have above.

Assuming you already have a solid foundation in OOP, Design Patterns, some basic RDBMS, etc, you actually already have 60% of what you need. Code is code.

The other 40% depends on the type of game you are making. 2D? Basic algebra. 3D? Now it gets tougher on the math (though thankfully today's engines do most of the heavy lifting for you, but you still need to understand what is used for what).

Doing multi-player? Now networking is the tricky part because you are likely to use some sort of UDP communication layer and all the REST/SOAP you learned at work, while still useful for managing latency-agnostic stuff like player lists, matchmaking requests and such, won't cut it for real-time multi-player games. Writing solid "netcode" that delivers a great experience at 60+ FPS requires some creativity in managing perception (extrapolation and interpolation when latency is present) and fault-tolerant algorithms. It is no fun when you get a headshot in an FPS, see it happen, but your opponent runs away, apparently unscathed.

As far as graphics, I solved that one easily... I had a friend join my project who was the graphics guy. I provided the framework for doing the graphics and turned that area over to him. He went above and beyond though and learned shaders and added all sorts of special effects.

Meanwhile, I focused my energy on the game engine, networking layers, AWS cloud stuff, matchmaking and lots of behind the scenes stuff.

The other thing I did was read as much as possible about Game Design. I ordered a dozen books from Amazon, including my absolute favorite Designing Games by Tynan Sylvester, the developer of RimWorld (link: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Games-Guide-Engineering-Experiences/dp/1449337937).

Hope that helps!

(These are all (non-fiction) books. If you want research papers I can give you a bibliography of things you might find a few interesting things within.)

Virtual Reality by Howard Rheingold is a very good place to start for a founding in the history of VR (right back to the invention of the HMD by Ivan Sutherland in the 1960's) but was written before the current reignited interest in VR that Oculus has triggered;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Virtual-Reality-Revolutionary-Computer-Generated-Worlds--And/dp/0671778978/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396019470&sr=8-1&keywords=virtual+reality+howard

If you like Rheingold's writing style then The Virtual Community might be of interest to you. Not directly related to VR, but as VR becomes more mainstream (& especially with players such as Facebook expressing interest) it is only a matter of time until VR becomes a popular interface to virtual communities;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0262681218/ref=oh_details_o08_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If such sociological aspects of computers/VR interest you, then Sherry Turkle's books are fascinating;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0262701111/ref=oh_details_o09_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0684833484/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0262012707/ref=oh_details_o08_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

As somebody else already mentioned, Infinite Reality is a nice read, but is very 'light' on science/technical detail;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0061809500/ref=oh_details_o05_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If you like your cyberpunk fiction then Cyberspace: First Steps is great - it even has a foreword written by William Gibson;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0262521776/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For more of a brain-fuck read, take a look at The Cyborg Experiments;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/082645903X/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For basic virtual environment/virtual world background I can recommend these two (Richard Bartle is the guy who invented MUD1);

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0131018167/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0631182144/ref=oh_details_o07_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And if by 'the VR experience' you mean 'immersion' or 'the sense of presence' then the first section of Virtual Space is a good start before diving into back issues of MIT Presence;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Virtual-Space-Spatiality-Inhabited-Worlds/dp/1447111001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396019722&sr=8-1&keywords=virtual+space+spatiality

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing To Our Brains

I think NoFap is really just a niche part of a bigger drive to get away from the internet (or at least use it differently), and I completely agree with all of it. The internet (if used without taking precautions) and porn both change the physical structures of our brains in ways that preclude having a fulfilling life with longterm satisfaction. Fortunately our brains are very plastic and it's not too late to fix them.

I've tried quitting the internet cold turkey, and it's haaaaaard. The problem is that it's a global addiction that's deeply intertwined with our social and work lives. You can't really get away from it without totally alienating yourself, so quitting all of the internet is not viable. It's very difficult to draw the line between useful or necessary internet usage and bad internet usage, so moderating your own internet usage can be tough.

Here's my attempt at drawing that line, though:

• If you're using the internet for data acquisition or communication, you're using it right.
  
• If you're using the internet for education or entertainment, you're using it wrong.
  
  Obviously education and entertainment are important, but the internet is just not the place to do it. With respect to education, the internet will promote distractedness and a habit of multitasking, and ultimately your learning will suffer (the book I mentioned focuses on this). If you want to learn, try to use the internet to find books, and then use those books to learn (or take a class, etc).
  
  There are, of course, certain things you can learn only through the internet. Tutorials, for example, are online, as is the vast majority of modern journalism. You need to be careful with either of these. When it comes to reading the news, I like to use my tablet and the Pulse application, and I'm only subscribed to longer-form journalism like the type you'd see in The Atlantic. When it comes to tutorials, do whatever you can to not open additional browser tabs. In either case, you should at the very least read these things like you would read a book. Don't allow yourself to get distracted by hyperlinks, and if some topic confuses you, usually it's okay to just ignore it (or mark it) and press on, rather than try to immediately learn about this other topic through outside sources.
  
  As for entertainment, that's something you can do in real life with real people (or again, with more reading, which is always healthy). Entertainment online is a process of overstimulation and isolation. Porn falls into this, but so do videogames and even mindlessly clicking pictures on reddit. In general, if you get on the internet without a clear purpose, you will probably be using it for entertainment, so always try to tell yourself why you're getting online before you do it.
  
  The first good use for the internet is data acquisition, by which I mean it's a good place to go to find a fact or set of facts. For example, if you want to go see a movie it makes perfect sense to get on the internet and look up movie times. In these situations, you'll get online, find the information you want, and then quit.
  
  Communication is a bit iffier, and maybe it should come with its own set of restrictions. Email and social networking are great, insofar as we don't use them for entertainment. I don't really suffer from this problem, but when I get on facebook it becomes pretty clear that many people are sort of addicted to self-posts and being heard. This might be absolutely fine for all I know (you could liken it to journaling), so for now I'm going to just assume that social networking, love or hate, is something we're going to have to live with if we want to partake in the 21st century.
  
  This might warrant its own post, since I've got quite a bit to say on it (I've kept most of it inside my head, so it might be totally rubbish for anyone else as far as I know).
  
  

Just some I like:

Dev

• [You Don't Know Javascript (series)(]https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS). Short and sweet mostly. Well written. Some are still pending publishing but there are a couple available now. I believe you can read them for free online, I just like paper books and wanted to show some support.
  
  
• Elequent Javascript (second release coming in november). Current version here if you are impatient. I have not personally read it yet, waiting for the next revision. I recommend it due to the high regard it has in the web community.
  
  
• Professional JavaScript for Web Developers. Sometimes called the bible of js. Big ole book. I have not read it through and through, but have enjoyed the parts I have perused.
  
  

  Design
  

  
  (I am weak in the design side, so take these recommendation with a grain of salt. I recommend them off of overall industry cred they receive and my own personal taste for them.)
  
  

• The Elements of Typographic Style. Low level detail into the art and science behind typography.
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think, Revisited. I read the original, not the new one that I linked. It is an easy read (morning commute on the train was perfect for it) and covers UX stuff in a very easy to understand way. My non-designer brain really appreciated it.
  
  below are books I have not read but our generally recommended to people asking this question
  
  
• About Face.
  
  
• The Design of Everyday Things.
  
  
• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.
  
  
  You can see a lot of these are theory based. My 0.02 is that books are good for theory, blogs are good for up to date ways of doing things and tutorial type stuff.
  
  Hope this helps!
  
  
  Battery is about to die so no formatting for you! I'll add note later if I remember.
  
  EDIT: another real quick.
  
  EDIT2: Eh, wound up on my computer. Added formatting and some context. Also added more links because I am procrastinating my actual work I have to do (picking icons for buttons is so hard, I never know what icon accurately represents whatever context I am trying to fill).
  

Hey there! Sorry for the delay. Lots has been going on. Axure is more than enough, but it comes with a cost. You can get a free trial and take it for a spin to see what all the hype is about.

So, four things you need to know:

• Know UI patterns, and know when to use them. IMO, this is the best book because it will show you the pattern, and then shows examples of how the pattern has been used. Very easy to learn these as you can always google or look them up on the fly.
  
  
• Know how to ask users the right questions. You want untainted data. Using questions to uncover insights is 80% of the battle. This book has a lovely section on the art of asking non-leading questions. I re-read it every few months. It even tells you the questions to never ask, like "If you could change anything about our app/interface, what would you change?" and why you never ask something like that. This is more of a medium difficulty to learn.
  
  
• Know all the basic, baseline usability laws & guidelines. This will get your foundation going. Read NNG's posts, they are very insightful. These are the easy to learn.
  
  
• Lastly, get acquainted with facilitation. If you can proctor a research session, guide a meeting, ask the right questions, etc., you can be a UXer. UXers are vital in being the glue that ties engineers, business, and aesthetics together in a way that is meaningful to users. Soft skills are hardest to learn and it will take you a long time, but you will get there if you practice as much as you can. If you don't practice, you will never get there as you can't learn it from a book or look it up on the fly.
  
  Now, your portfolio should have as many full projects as possible. From the very beginning, all the way through the end, and list the outcomes of the project. You need to outline the specific roles you played, how your skills impacted the project, show what your deliverables were, talk about challenges, etc. Hands down that is the most powerful format of showing your work. It requires more effort than just lazily posting pretty images, but it will get you cold callbacks 90% of the time. The other 10% is just who you know.
  
  Hope that is helpful! Always happy to answer questions.

Okay, here are 4 suggestions about theory. There are plenty more, but these are a few of my favourites.

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals

• Chunky theory book and one of my favourites. Also has a companion book of essays
  
  Characteristics of Games
  
  
• Really nice combination of chapters from various designers (including Richard Garfield of MtG) looking into different aspects of design.
  
  Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design
  
  
• All about systems and how resources move through them in games and the affect that has.
  
  Theory of Fun for Game Design
  
  
• Easy to read, nicely illustrated and conveys a powerful fundamental idea for game design.
  
  Good luck and happy reading.
  

Hey there!
UX Designer/Researcher here. I came from a background in Psychology and Neuroscience research before UX Design. Personally I used the UCSD Extension for a certificate in UX Design. I really appreciated the course work and in conjunction with the Coursera Interaction Design felt like I was given plenty of exposure while also having flexibility to work.
From my experience in the industry, I would look into what area you are interested in. UX careers can involve programming and development, but I use absolutely no coding at my current position (at others I have though). The biggest selling point to an employer is showing an understanding of the process: wireframes, flow charts, user studies, iteration (agile/scrum/waterfall), and design understanding. I have worked on multiple billion dollar webpages and can say the process is nearly identical when scaled down.
If you are interested in some resources to start on your own I would recommend Simon Sinek's Start with Why for understanding how to look at design solutions.
Don Norman has many great books, including The Design of Everyday Things.
Some actual books to look at and learn on your own are A Project Guide to UX Design, Lean UX, and The UX Book. I highly recommend the last one I find it very thorough and digestible and for ~60 bucks is a reasonable textbook.
Lastly, once you have a grasp of UX as a concept I would get familiar with the Adobe Suite, Axure or InVision, and any others from career sites that you might not know about (I really like [Sketch]() as a cheap option ~$99).

Best of luck, feel free to ping me with questions

"I craved for games that had easy achievements so I could feel good again."

+1

The industry gamifies games to make you want to play them regardless of their quality. It's not even a "I want to finish a hard game" or "I want to complete a hard game". You just want the 100% completion/platinum trophy and we will be inclined to choose the easy way to the reward.

I've been reading about dopamine and its behavioral effects. Apparently it doesn't only moderate reward but also motivation. Check my comment posted today for explanatory links.

You essentially opted in for easy reward over hard, it's like opting to avoid going to the gym or improve your social skills in favor of playing video games and indulge to pornography. Another good book is the shallows: what the internet is doing to our brains where the author argues that the medium (how we choose to convey a message) can affect us more than the information.

Because another thing that gives us quick fixes is the novelty of browsing Reddit for funny things, and the warmth of social approval that we get from getting one of our comments/posts upvoted.

It's not the advice you are looking for, but I can't stress it enough: design is about problem solving, rather than pure aesthetics.

Sure, making things look pretty is important. However, making your design understandable and easy to use is even more important. It's probably what you should focus on.

You are designing something for real human beings. Your design should solve a real problem in the most elegant way. How? That's something I can't explain in a single comment.

This video series explains it really well. It's not about web applications, but that doesn't matter. The message is the same. You prefer reading? This and this book do an extremely good job of explaining how to design things.

Also, this article explains the point I'm trying to make far better than I ever could. Good luck!

ALL technology? As in you're not even allowed to listen to music? Because that's what I'd recommend if you can get away with it; a lot of people listen to music while they do other things but very few people sit down and relax and focus on listening to their favorite music without multitasking, it's a great way to pass time.

Failing that, taking up drawing or writing are economical options considering you're tight on cash. A loaner guitar or cheapo from a pawn shop could be healthy hobbies, but they're tough to learn without your computer to access resources.

You said you don't like reading but I'd suggest you try to learn to love it, because it's going to be one of the cheapest and most fulfilling ways to pass time given your constraints. I think as you spend time away from technology you'll find reading more enjoyable as your mind recovers some of it's ability to focus. Just going out on a limb here (and projecting a bit), but do you often feel unable to focus on tasks like reading long passages or say sitting back to watch a movie without interruption? I know at least one author who's written a book suggesting that the way we're presented with rapid-fire and incredibly diverse information/entertainment on the internet has left our ability for deep focus impaired, while our ability to multi-task has improved.

Another option that occurred to me mid-post is that you might try to find some cheap model airplane kits or something like that, they're quite time consuming if you can be meticulous.

• I suggest you also get acquainted with the basics of design and design thinking. "The Design of Everyday Things" is a seminal text for this. There are some Coursera and similar courses you could check out too.
  
  
• This is a great introduction for thinking about methods and process: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Your-Users-Second-Technologies/dp/0128002328
  
  
• I suggest you look for Steve Portigal's videos on Youtube and check out his podcast Dollars to Donuts. He interviews research leaders and so you can pick up a lot of important perspective. This is a great way to pick up the jargon and shibboleth of industry.
  
  
• UX research is wonderfully interdisciplinary (in a way academia isn't), but that means you need to get beyond the cord anthropologist methods and get a foundation in cog psych, stats, HCI, etc.
  
  Phd in anthropology is a fantastic basis for this work, but you are definitely going to have to demonstrate that you can adapt to a VERY different research context and build a bunch of skills that you might not have developed in grad school. It can be a very great move, but very humbling (especially initially).
  
  I made a similar transition from a Phd in ethnography to ux research a few years ago, feel free to message me if you have questions (if you do let me know what city you are in as that will change any advice I would give you).
  
  Good luck!

I am self taught and design applications for human and system workflows at a Internet security company. I am biased but I don't think a degree will necessarily give you more hands on skills than just finding projects and building a portfolio to show your skills. There are many many different niche categories, every UX professional I have met have different skill sets. For example I tend in a version of lean UX which includes need finding, requirements validation, user testing, workflow analysis, system design, prototyping, analytics, and accessibility design (not in that order). I am interlocked with the engineering team so my job is FAR different than many UX professionals I know who work with marketing teams. They tend to specialize very deeply in research, prototyping, user testing, and analytics. Some UX types code and some use prototyping tools like Balsamiq, UXpin, Adobe etc. There is heavy debate on which path is more useful/safe/ relevant. Where I work I do not get time to code because my team and I feel I provide the best value to our engineering team and internal/external customers by doing the items listed above. The other UX person I will work with me on similar activities but then may be given projects to look at the best options for reusable components and code them up for testing.

TLDR:

• Depending on the industry the skill need will be different.
  
• Depending of the team the skill need will be different.
  
• There isn't one way to do user experience.
  
  
  Here are some of my resources I found helpful.
  
  (confessions: I've posted these before in other comments but I hope you find it helpful)
  
  Sub-reddits:
  
  
• /r/userexperience
  
• /r/hci
  
  Sites:
  
  
• http://ux.stackexchange.com/ <- Community to find and ask UX questions
  
• http://www.nngroup.com/ <- Read all the articles
  
• http://www.uie.com/ <-Video Training (More advanced)
  
• http://www.lynda.com/ <-Over 30 video training courses (Intro - may be more videos now... thats my last count)
  
• http://uxchecklist.github.io/ <-Intro to techniques
  
  Books:
  
  
• Don't Make me Think
  
• Designing with the Mind in Mind
  
• Lean UX
  
• The UX Book
  
• The Persona Lifecycle
  
• Sketching User experiences
  
• 100 things every designer should know about people
  
• Prototyping
  
• The User experience Team of One
  
• Interviewing users
  
• A Web for everyone
  
• See What I mean
  
• More here http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/
  
  Tools (other than typical Adobe design tools):
  
  
• www.usabilityhub.com <- great for cheap/free prototype validation.
  
• http://www.invisionapp.com/
  
• http://www.axure.com/
  
• https://balsamiq.com/
  
• http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
  
  
  MISC:
  
  
• Types of UX Job Titles
  
  

Your better off getting hold of some good e-books and reading those and running through them.

Story Mapping by Jeff Patton
If you don't already story map then you have a lot to learn, if you do this book helps you home that skill to a fine art.
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920033851.do

Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf
How lean processes and UX work hand in hand
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920021827.do

lean ux for startups:
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920026242.do

Imagine by Marty Cagan
A product management book every UX designer should read.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B001AQ95UY?btkr=1

Hooked by Nir Eyal
An interesting works around user habits and how to creating habit forming products.
http://www.amazon.com/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products-ebook/dp/B00HJ4A43S

Design with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson
Something I'm reading now that I've found quite interesting. I like anything that gives scientific observations of human behaviour to help drive my decision making.
http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Second-Understanding-Guidelines/dp/0124079148/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416221732&sr=1-1&keywords=designing+with+the+mind+in+mind&pebp=1416221734239

There's classics like don't make me think and the design of every day things by Steve Krug and Don Norman (these are more broad in scope).

I ready a great paper from Nielson group about conducting user research (userlabs, tests, whatever you want to call it):
www.nngroup.com

That's plenty to sink your teeth into.

Maybe look up some info on video-game design and augmented reality. It's all created by human programmers (ignoring AI in recent years), and if someone else can create an entire virtual world from scratch, so you can you! Even better, you don't have to "reinvent the wheel" when it comes to dreams. You can even cut out the death-march of constantly trying to improve graphics software/hardware (unless you really want to spend a few months trying to get rain wetness to "look right") and skip straight to the cool stuff.

I'd recommend starting with something easy and objective, like a Diegetic Interface rather than trying for something subjective which only you can see. Do you have a favorite interface from a video-game that you like? You can image it appearing on a clear piece of glass in front of you. Later on you can try [wearing] the piece of glass and have yourself a old fashioned HUD. Mess around with different ways to display information and maybe even go for a book on interface design like About Face or The Joy of UX.

edit: clarity

> What does being a UX specialist entail?

It can vary quite a bit. Most of my time in UX was spent as a usability consultant. I worked with external clients (anywhere from mobile tech and eCommerce to health care and b2b interaction) to design, conduct, and report the findings of usability studies to improve their products (or address whatever need they had). This can involve a lot of different research methods including eye tracking, surveys, contextual inquiry, etc., but most commonly involved "user studies" where you bring in their target audience to use the product and provide feedback. Using a combination of performance metrics, subjective feedback, and other information gathered, we reported back to the client and usually included some re-design suggestions.

There are three major areas of UX: computer science, psychology/cognitive science, and design. Depending on your emphasis in these fields, a UX job can vary greatly from doing mostly Information Architecture (IA) and graphical design to software engineering with a concentration on UX principles and how they fit into development (such as through Behavior Driven Design).

> Any good reading recommendations on good UX practices?

UX learns a lot from Human Factors & Ergonomics (a field within Psychology) and a must read for anyone interested in HF&E (and/or usability) is Donald Norman's "Psychology of Everyday Things" They also re-released the book titled "Design of Everyday Things." It's informative, fun, and easy to read.

For an introduction to UX methods, I suggest Rogers/Sharp/Preece's "Interaction Design. There are other books that will go into more depth, but those two will give you a strong foundation.

I started in market research as well before transitioning to a UX Researcher. These are the standouts from the reading list I started with:

The Elements of User Experience - A great intro to the whole field of UX. In-depth and covers the user centered design process.

Don't Make Me Think Short but comprehensive book on usability.

Handbook of Usability Testing Everything you need to know about usability testing.

Interviewing Users This book is great and is one I go back to regularly. The author Steve Portigal, also has a podcast on user research, "Dollars to Donuts" which is worth checking out.

Another comment mentioned the Jeff Sauro book which is very good, and also the Userfocus blog and newsletter. I've done David Travis' courses as well and would recommend them to people new to the field.

https://www.usability.gov/ is a great resource for templates, methods, definitions etc.

NN/g and UIE are my two most read blogs/newsletters.

1. r/UXResearch (okay, it is still growing, but let's make it a good resource!)
   
   
2. If you like his book, Steve Portigal's podcast is also fantastic (https://www.portigal.com/podcast/) He interviews the UXR leaders at several companies and really drills into their processes and challenges. He has some great talks on youtube as well.
   
   
3. There are several good books related to UX research by Rosenfeld Media. Their "Research Pack" ain't a bad place to start: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/research-pack/ (includes the book you mentioned)
   
   
4. It is a bit more of a textbook, but this is a fantastic resource: https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Your-Users-Second-Technologies/dp/0128002328
   
   
   

If you want to know how to deal with all the negative comments people give you, the only real answer is to ignore them. If you want to know how to convince people that being a indie dev is a worthwhile pursuit, then you have to release a game that sells really well.

This may sound like very useless advice, but the truth is that getting into indie game development is not a good idea. Most likely you will never finish a game, or you will release a game that nobody cares about and doesn't make you much(if any) money. Some people spend years making a game, and still end up releasing a bad game. The simple truth is that no amount of hard work, dedication, or love of game development is going to guarantee your success.

Most aspiring gamedevs like to talk about Minecraft, Stardew Valley, or Dwarf Fortress, as if the existence of those games guarantees their success. Most people don't realize that for every Notch, there are 1,000 people who make games nobody even knows about. Most likely you, me, and most of the other people here will fail to make a game that earns enough money to live off.

If you can't afford to release a game or two (or 5) without turning a profit, then game development just isn't for you. If my post upsets you, keep in mind that you will hear much worse from loads of people no matter how good your game is. I would never recommend developing indie game to anybody as a career choice, it is very hard work that will most likely earn you less money than working part time at minimum wage. You should think of game development as a fun hobby; because, until you make a big hit, game development isn't a career any more than buying lottery tickets.

If you've made it to the end of my post and you still want to be a game developer, well that's the kind of attitude you're going to need, so you have that going for you. I do also have some practical advice for improving your gamedev skills. When you're talking about your knowledge of programming, you seem hung up on the language itself. Knowing a programming language makes you about as much of a programmer as knowing a human language makes you a writer. I'm not saying this to be mean (you may find that hard to believe at this point); I'm just trying to point out that there are other aspects of programming for you to learn. Some good things to read up on are programming(or design) patterns, algorithm design, and general (language agnostic) programming topics. There are also game design topics that don't relate to the programming aspects. I'll leave a quick list of resources below.

Project Euler

Theory of Fun for Game Design

Game Programming Patterns

Coursera's Software Development Category

MIT Open CourseWare Computer Science Category

It's been on my mind again, so I'm happy to see it here on Truegaming. But there's this video that might help out a bit or at least be a bit entertaininly-interesting.

It might be awhile until we are at the point where we can have entire schools based around this kind of discussion. But hopefully someday. There's plenty of interesting books outthere that have already been suggested here. There's some books based around game design like Raph Koster's "A Theory of Fun". There're YouTubers like aforementioned MrBTongue and Satchbag that fondly talks about games or themes in games and how it affects them and those around them. Then there's /r/truegaming that talks about these things as well, albeit a bit more fanatically.

But sadly I got nothing to fit exactly your category that you want to see, though I'd love to see it myself. Perhaps a start for finding some stories of interesting user interactions in MMOs can start with Eve Online. Check out The Mittani. Although I haven't read it in a long while I do remember its launch when I still flew with Goonswarm/Goonwaffe and the cool pilots and writers of the site. Some great stories and unintentionally interesting insight into the mindset of players interacting in an MMO space.

There are not enough research papers specifically on gaming addiction because gaming addiction together with social media and pornography falls under the umbrella of internet addiction - Like you said a rather new field. Some breakthroughs are being made in the last years to have it recognized as an addiction per se (at least in Europe) the problem with conducting enough research is that there are no funds and insurance companies have no wish having another area of responsibility to potentially give away money to people suffering from it. If gaming addiction become completely recognized by international bodies of medicine then insurance companies might have to pay preexisting clients for passed and current treatments ---> something they definitely do not want to do.
Nonetheless here are some videos of legit men of science (not some random ex gamer) that research the field.

"Here is a short interview with Dr. David Greenfield talking about some of the mental and physical applications of gaming and internet addiction"


There are also longer talks on his channel like this one.
Dr. Greenfield has been researching Internet addiction since the 90's.


"Dr. Klaus Woelfling, from the University of Mainz. Germany is taking steps in treating Internet addiction and especially gaming addiction" - this one is a difficult watch primarily because the speaker is very uncharismatic (try watching with the speed setting on 1.5).

Last but definitely not least is "Your Brain on Porn"
Yes, yes I know, you might not want to hear that another of your favorite pastimes is bad for you, but this video covers on a very scientific basis the damages that watching excessive pornography causes to the brain, and no this is not some kind of NoFap cult propaganda, it speaks only on the subject of internet porn. Like I said before, porn together with gaming fall under the umbrella of internet addiction because the reaction we receive from these negative habits has the same structure. If you actually watch the Your Brain on Porn video you will hear him mention numerous times that the damages caused to dopamine receptors is similar to the ones cause from gaming and extensive internet use.

This is just some of the evidence done by men of medicine and science from the top of my head. If you want to go deeper I'd recommend The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains By Nicholas Carr an American author and Pulitzer Prize winner (for that book), witch contains truly numerous examples of scientific studies and references you might want in the bibliography.


Also The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge M.D that talks mainly about brain plasticity and how different behaviors and habits cause the brain to form new cells , create new neural pathways etc etc . He also gives lots of examples how positive and negative behaviors causes various changes IN THE BRAIN, Internet addiction stuff included.

If you really want proof and not just searching for a reason to dismiss things you dont like the sound of then I hope this comment will serve you. If you do nothing less at least watch the first interview with Dr. David Greenfield. It is only 6 minutes long.

Hope this post that took me 50 minutes to put together and find all the links, will be of service to somebody.
Peace.

Edit: Grammar and formatting

I wasn't very confident, I actually pushed out the Kickstarter kind of fast because I didn't want to come out just as or after Spacebase DF-9 was announced.

There was no initial following. First PR move I made was actually a test - I put the first look video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV6wyeZ7458) up on Reddit and elsewhere and tried to gauge the response. When the response was very strong, I moved forward with Kickstarter a few weeks later. For KS, I was confident enough to put the goal at 20k; that's about it. I was pretty sure I could hit that number. Of course the game did 13x that amount, but this was very much not anticipated :P

Basically, I think PR works the same as game design. Develop the pitch, test it on people, see what they respond to, emphasize that, replace the rest, repeat until every part of the pitch hits really well. I'd been refining the RimWorld pitch for about 5 months on friends, family, and acquaintances just by explaining it and watching their facial expressions as I mentioned different points. By the time of the KS I knew (not thought) that every point worked - DF-like, sci fi colony, western theme, Firefly/dune inspiration. I'd cut the parts that didn't work, like the good/evil colony idea.

RW also had a nearly unheard-of advantage on Kickstarter, which was that it worked and was already fun (which I was confident of, again, because I had run lots of controlled playtests and refined the game for about 5 months by then). Got lots of traffic from people who came from YouTube vids of people playing the journalist-only pre-pre-alpha.

<ShamelessPlug>I've written much more at length on game design in general in my book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449337937 </ShamelessPlug>

The Baconist

(there's no bacon in this game despite the name: I originally was going to make a roguelike about stretching a really long bacon across the dungeon but it's going in a different direction now)

It can be played here: https://submarination.space/baconist132/index.html

Screenshot of one of the unfinished puzzles: https://submarination.space/baconist/puzzle.png

(move with vikeys or numpad or WASD or mouse)

This is a puzzle game where you need to solve puzzles. Right now that means you push boulders like in a sokoban because I haven't got around to implementing actual interesting mechanics yet.

Since past two weeks I've managed to lay down the most important technical foundations:

• Performance has been slightly improved (still crappy on browser but it's playable; the game can be compiled to native version that runs in a terminal and it's way better in there).
  
• Field of view now works more sensibly when you look through portals.
  
• Your character can still remember parts of a level that have been seen before (they are shaded darker)
  
• I now have a system that makes it fairly easy to design the entire dungeon (I essentially just have a giant text file that's interpreted and turned into world).
  
  My roguelike can also display animated things. I made my water look like all fancy and animated, a lot like in Brogue but I soon realized this is probably going to be a problem if I use water in puzzles and it has to stand out well from surroundings and look consistent. Sometimes boring-looking things are better. Overall my game has lots of flat colors.
  
  At this point my concerns are about designing the game mechanics themselves (as opposed to technical challenges).
  
  Pushing boulders gets boring quickly. I have some unfinished code that would add chain chomp -like enemies to the game and the puzzles would be about how to go around them or neutralize their threat. And I have a sketchbook where I threw in bunch of more ideas. My thinking is to implement wacky ideas and seeing what works. I also have a book on game design I'm going through, trying to educate myself what kind of (puzzle) game would be fun to play.
  
  I guess this is not really a roguelike. It's a puzzle game and the entire world right now is hand-crafted. There are no random elements to this game whatsoever. But I think that's fine.

Finally home and having a chance to reply. I pulled five books off of my shelf that I would recommend, but there are doubtless more that you should read.

Raph Koster's Theory of Fun for Game Design

Janet H. Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game

Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan's Second Person: Role-Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media

They wrote a Third Person as well, I just haven't gotten the chance to read it yet. You might be able to find PDF copies online somewhere, but if you have the money, you should try to support the writer's by buying. Show them that people are interested in critical discourse about games.

Next week I think I'm going to order a few new texts (after payday), and I'd be happy to let you know what I think once i have them in hand.

Here's a game developer road map:

https://github.com/utilForever/game-developer-roadmap

​

If you want to learn about Game Design, I recommend this book: Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences (it's by Tynan Sylvester, creator of Rimworld). I'm neither a game developer nor a game designer, but I really enjoyed the book, because it is somewhat the 'science' of game design, it's about mechanics, about emotion, about decisions and so on - things I knew there are, but didn't really understood the impact it has on a game, how those things make a game "good" or "bad".

​

What you can do now:

• Try to ship a game for android. All the tools are free, I think publishing in the play store is a one time payment of a few dollars. You will learn a lot of programming skills, but also you will understand what it means, to ship something. The awesome thing about the play store is: A lot of potential users.
  
• Contribute to open source games ( https://github.com/leereilly/games).

Overflow looks interesting, particularly vbecause of the Sketch integration.

TBH, up until recently I've still been using OmniGraffle, with a healthy dose of stencils/templates to support the workflows I'm used to.

I specifically work with Jesse James Garrett's Visual Vocabulary, which I think is still the best way to demonstrate user interactions. In his book The Elements of User Experience he makes the point that the visual/"surface" layer should be separated out in planning from the structural layer. I agree wholeheartedly with this directive. For that reason, a tool like Overflow or Invision comes in handy at the very end of the design process - but in the midst of planning user flows, one should be working firmly in the world of "boxes and arrows."

That's why right now, my current go-to choice is Whimsical. While I can ultimately paste imagery in as-desired, from the beginning, it lets me be better able to work in boxes-and-arrows until I develop the full scale of the user flow.

(That being said, for a strictly "illustrating the visual interaction that I've already created the structure for" purpose, Overflow seems like a winner. I just wouldn't skip the first (structural) part of the process.)

I recommend Tynan Sylvester's book "Designing Games" (you can get a 7-day free trial of the e-book on Amazon). A lot of people will recommend A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell but I personally felt it lacked substance. For the more philosophical aspects of the craft, here are some talks that I think are valuable 1 2 3
4 5 (hopefully ordered in a somewhat logical progression).

Another thing -- find out what kind of games you want to make, find out who makes that kind of game (a few examples: Jonathan Blow for puzzle games, Raph Koster and Project Horseshoe for MMOs, Tom Francis for whatever the fuck he makes, etc. -- and "kind" does not necessarily mean genres), and study what those people have to say, figuring out what you agree with and disagree with. Standing on others' shoulders is the easiest way to get good and the best path toward making games of true quality.

This was an extremely fascinating read. I've felt this way for a while about social networks and it was part of the reason I finally got off Facebook after so many years.

One clear indication of this I saw frequently was the fact that no one called someone on their birthday any more (or even texted). I was seeing parents even wishing their children Happy Birthday or family members just liking another Happy Birthday post. This kind of impersonal interaction always bugged me.

This article has some great points in it and I hope there is a lot further research put into it. There are a few books cited, and a few others I found related. I've ordered ALL of them and plan to read them all as this is a really fascinating subject for me (a person who was born at the beginning of this era and has become an adult in it with two children who are going to grow up and have to adapt to this).

Books referenced:

You Are Not a Gadget - a Manifesto

Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Eachother

And one related:

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

• The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Second Edition
  
  
• Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design
  
  
• Theory of Fun for Game Design
  
  
• Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
  
  
• Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes
  
  Merry x-mas :)
  

Since you mentioned Rimworld: Tynan, the creator of Rimworld has a gamasutra post and a book about how he designs games. (Spoiler: It's all about the story experienced by the player).

I can tell you about the thought process for my colony simulator:

1. I want to have a prototype as fast as possible, so the system should be as simple as possible.
   
2. The focus of the game are the colonists, their personality and their emotions when something good or bad happens.
   
   Therefore I only have a couple (~10) resources that are not even items on the map, but are simply counted in the UI, like in a strategy game. If you're looking for inspiration, you can download it for free on the website.
   
   For your game, I think you could first think about what the focus is in your game. Do you want the player to spend more time managing resources, handling colonists, building stuff, or defending the colony? Then plan around your focus. Hope this helps you :)

Hi there, thanks for keeping it friendly in light of my rather harsh comments.

I think my main problem was that the article appears to present your UI as something new or innovative, even though it's clearly not (as the other commenter pointed out). Games have used tables and infographics to represent things and processes for decades.

There are whole genres of games that play like this - from turn-based strategy browser games, management simulations like Football Manager, Economy Simulations, War Games, etc. Some of these games focus around a central map, but many do not.

Picking on terminology was a crappy thing to do, sorry about that. I don't want to dump a list of books on you, but maybe as an introductory reading it would be good to familiarize yourself with the difference between Implementation Model (how the tool or simulation works under the hood), the Mental Model (what a User believes to be true about something, their personal understanding of a subject matter) and the Representation Model (how a digital tool presents the model/simulation to their Users via its interface). Maybe this guy here.

This is pretty much the domain of Human-Computer Interaction, or HCI. That's the Cognitive Psychology focused academic underpinning of the analysis and design (design as in crafting and shaping, not decorating ;) ) of digital tools. Any introductory HCI book would give a good foundation, I like the works of Alan Dix & co, and Jenny Preece & co.

I think this is something that a lot of people, not just those with ADHD, are dealing with. I really believe that the 24/7 use of phones with their constant notifications plus the constant mindless browsing of news, social media feeds, entertainment sites are sapping people's attention spans and ability to focus. It conditions our brains to crave excessive stimulation and when we don't get it (such as during a 2 hour art film), we get bored and can't focus even if we enjoy what we're doing on some level. It's even worse for delayed gratification tasks like studying which can be boring in the moment but pays off at some later time.

I've been meaning to read The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains to get a better understanding of how this all works. But the book was published in 2011 and even in the 6 years since, the way we use our devices has changed a lot.

Perhaps it's best if we really cut out a lot of the mindless browsing and view out "screen diet" similar to how we view nutrition. Reddit, Twitter, clickbait news are all "junk" which are fine in moderation but can mess up our ability to focus on stuff that matters. Or even our ability to enjoy fun stuff like movies or books.

There's also the fact that internet companies want you to have a short attention span. It makes them money. Whether it's ad revenue or impulse buys, more eyes constantly browsing their sites means more money for them. And a shot attention span for the rest of us.

Silence on the Wire is a set of very interesting lateral/passive attack scenarios in information security. It's not a how-to or "field guide," however; consider it more of a series of theoretical scenarios good for insights and perspective, to help understand and begin to think about the many ways in which a simple tool, mechanism, or a common practice can be exploited for other uses. Some of these scenarios are far-fetched, and others are already out-dated, but that's not the strength of the book.

One great part about this book is that it does not require much knowledge on any of the topics covered, whether technical or otherwise. Zalewski gives an adequate primer on just about everything you need to know in order to understand the basics of what's going on.

It's not light reading by any means, though. This is a great book if you want to wrap your mind around some very cleverly designed scenarios.

Ironically, your solution may lay within the pages of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. The author describes how his undying love for books seemed to fade, how picking up and getting into a book seemed much more difficult than before and how distracted he felt he'd become.

This book resonated with me. I am a book lover yet I found myself losing my desire to spend time with a book. I would pick one up and I'd feel my mind start to wander or I'd feel fidgety before the end of a page.

There is a solution. I restructured my approach to the use of the internet and I'm glad to say that I'm reading like a champ again. All the joy and fun is back.

You basically have no game design education and have absolutely no idea on anything.

Luckily for you I have collected some resources that is the distilled essence of game design that makes a complete noob to pro game designer.

Read/watch this:
http://www.sirlin.net/article-archive/
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/231225/Video_Practical_Creativity__A_way_to_invent_new_kinds_of_video_games.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/233326/Video_Designing_your_game_to_offer_meaningful_choices.php
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
http://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/
http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/game-design/paradigm-shift.html

Bookmark this: http://129.16.157.67:1337/mediawiki-1.22.0/index.php/Main_Page

Subscribe to this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTznQhurW5AaiYPbhEA-KA

and this:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWqr2tH3dPshNhPjV5h1xRw
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI3GAJaOTL1BoipG41OmfyA
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm4JnxTxtvItQecKUc4zRhQ

Troll and read all the articles from this: http://www.gamasutra.com/category/design/

Good books on game design I recommend:
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Mechanics-Advanced-Design-Voices/dp/0321820274
http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449363210/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1449363210&linkCode=as2&tag=atheoroffunfo-20

Now my personal advice as a indie game designer.

Specialize!

You have to specialize on one domain where you devour any information available.
Her are some domains I know about that you can take on as an indie on a budget.

CRPGs: Info on: http://www.rpgcodex.net/

JRPG: Look also at japanese hentai rpgs because they are some game design jewels there, RPG Maker community

Action Games and platformers : Understand game feel and juice/impact, somewhat saturated indie scene

Puzzles and board games: Do not buy into f2p as it kills your creativity

Roguelikes and survival: Saturated indie scene

Narrative: Visual Novel style games and adventure games, great if you have a good writer and artist, some overlap with JRPGs,
VN community: http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/index.php?sid=59e38b38f69f9e5b5c271de0843d2569 ,
http://www.renpy.org/

Server Multiplayer: Games like space station 13

A forum where you can find information on games of the above types: http://forums.tigsource.com/

Do not do 3D, without a astronomical budget you won't get far.

Congratulations! Now you are better game designer then 90% of inde developers!

The citybound guy has been putting out daily blog posts of his city sim game programming. Wildly ambitious: http://blog.cityboundsim.com/

Not directly city game design but I highly recommend Rimworld creator's book Designing Games: Engineering Experiences for game design. I've emailed him a few times and he's very responsive and forthcoming with his wisdom.

I'm designing a city game myself right now. My theory on these games is that while they are experience engines in the sense that, for example, Sim City triggers your emotions with poverty, wealth, crime, health -- SC tends to be more like gardening: you plant seeds, water them, and see what comes out and much of the enjoyment of playing the game comes from that.

As far as programming goes, I went with a custom entity component system and am using an off the shelf engine (Unreal) to avoid the hard work of optimizing drawing tons of stuff (and lights) on screen.

I highly recommend Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences.

It's a hard to describe book but it's worth a read. For one, he defines a video game as a series of mechanics to interact with one another to create an experience. Something unique to our medium. Storytelling through mechanics interacting with one another and creating a fiction within your own head.

The game he's creating right now, Rimworld, applies that concept and simulates a living breathing colony with pawns that have likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. They have jobs they want to do, will do it if they have to or certain jobs they won't do at all. You set a list of priorities for your colony and let things play out with no (practical) way of controlling individual pawns directly.

They also simulate relationships within the game and the pawns will remember interactions with one another. They will dislike one another if they're insulted and they'll break if a loved one dies. They'll visit the graves of people who died years/seasons ago.

All these mechanics interact with each other to create a story in your head that's different with every colony you start. That kind of storytelling is unique to our medium, he says. So that's how I can best describe the first half of the book.

The second half of the book is more about the iterative process of creating the game itself. Creating iterative loops where you add in features, polish and then loop again until release. It's a more complex half to describe shortly but just as important as the design process itself.

I highly recommend Theory of Fun by Raph Koster. It's worth getting in paperback rather than kindle because it is full of comics that shows his points.

Recently I've been working on a pong game for the Wii U. I've come to understand that I need to make games with a small scope in order to actually finish them. I used to spend hours working on RPG Maker games, only to find that all I had done was copy and paste a bunch of houses in a town and set up the events so that the hero could enter them. I would never finish those games because they were too big for me to finish.

Something small like Pong is easy enough to get a fun prototype up in a weekend, and since then I've spent months fine tuning it the way I want it to play. (Another thing I've learned is that making gameplay and making a game are two different things--making a game is much harder.)

What kinds of prototype games do you make?

Interaction Design

• About Face 3 by Alan Cooper
  
• Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge
  
• Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell
  
• Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin
  
• Making Things Talk: (2011) (2007) by Tom Igoe
  
  Interior Design
  
  
• The Decoration of Houses by Edith Wharton and Ogden, Jr. Codman
  
• Domino: The Book of Decorating by Deborah Needleman
  
• Design*Sponge at Home: A Guide to Inspiring Homes by Grace Bonney
  
• The Vintage/Modern Home by Katherine Sorrell
  
• The Fundamentals of Interior Design by Simon Dodsworth
  
  Landscape Architecture
  
  
• Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards by Leonard J. Hopper
  
• Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
  
• Landscape Graphics by Grant W. Reid
  
• Cities for People by Jan Gehl
  
• Design with Nature by Ian L. McHarg
  
  Lighting Design
  
  
• Stage Lighting Design by Richard Pilbrow
  
• The Architecture of Natural Light by Henry Plummer
  
• Painting With Light by John Alton
  
• Made of Light by Anthony Tischhauser
  
• Color, Environment and Human Response by Frank H. Mahnke & Rudolf H. Mahnke
  
  Product Design
  
  
• Sketching: Drawing Techniques from Product Designers by Koos Eissen
  
• Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek
  
• The Craftsman by Richard Sennett
  
• Mythologies by Roland Barthes
  
• Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
  
  Product Design
  
  
• In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World by John Thackara
  
• The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II & James H. Gilmore
  
• Universal Methods of Design by Bruce Hanington & Bella Martin
  
• Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart
  
• Mental Models by Indi Young
  
  Sound Design
  
  
• Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema by David Sonnenschein
  
• Designing Sound by Andy Farnell
  
• Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen by Michel Chion
  
• The Sound Effects Bible by Ric Viers
  
• Sound Theory Sound Practice by Rick Altman
  
  Urban Design
  
  
• The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
  * Cities for People by Jan Gehl
  
• A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
  
• The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler
  
• The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch
  
  Web Design
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
  
• HTML & CSS: Design and Build Web Sites by Jon Duckett
  
• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird
  
• Responsive Web Design with HTML5 and CSS by Ben Frain
  
• Hardboiled Web Design by Andy Clarke
  

Honestly, I don't even know where to start.. No offense intended, but you are in the very beginning of digital design. This is not to say that you don't have the technical skills, but that you should study more visual design theory. Good design has rules, which are learnable. Below is a book list, which I think will be a great value to you:

http://www.amazon.com/Ordering-Disorder-Principles-Design-Voices/dp/0321703537/

http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/1118766571/

http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Beautiful-Web-Design/dp/0992279445/

I don't want to discourage you, your page will look much better if you read only one of these.

Yes, plenty others are charging for DLC's and upgrades (erjemHOI4jrem). Here it's not exactly the same but.. more or less (read down).

Still, something doesn't quite fit. Bear with me.

Back in 2013 they raised 200k$ on Kickstarter with something that worked already:
> The game already exists, and the testers are already having good experiences with it. We've got a small crew of testers on the Ludeon forums sharing their experiences with the game. Take it from them, not from me.

Indeed, the game was already looking solid.. Even if graphically speaking we're looking at a Prison Architect copy&paste, which I don't think anyone mind, not even the guys from Prison Architect which is pretty cool, but still worth mentioning that no much innovation went there. What I mean by that is that most of the hard work (genre, game mechanics, plot and so on) was long done.

So that cash, an already big and thriving community, a kickstarter success and Steam Greenlit... All of that before ending 2013. So in that situation you already know what you are facing, what you'll need to change and so on. And since then, it's been selling at 30$.

According to steamdb.info (I don't know the reliability but doesn't seem crazy numbers) they have sold about 700k copies.

They do have developed 3 DLC's. For 170$, 15$ and 370$ aprox. The most expensive one says:

> This DLC gives you the right to enter a name and character backstory into the game, with skills, appearance, and special work requirements. In addition, your character will appear as the leader of another faction!
>
> Write yourself as an interplanetary detective, an entrepreneur, an ex-artist, or anything else you can think of. Players will recruit, command, and fight you for all time!
>
> [...]

The actual game dev has been very scarce in these years, for everything that I mentioned this game has going for it.

Anyhow, I do like this game. I like it a lot. I'm making it clear because after giving facts some people may get the wrong idea. It's not about thrashing it, quite the contrary.

I think the guy nailed it in terms of the game itself (BTW he actually has a pretty good book on game design) but with all that money and all that time, maybe (and of course here I can only talk out of my ass because can't know) he hasn't managed the growth well and/or he hasn't allied with someone to do it.

So now, instead of medium to big upgrades every month or two (Prison Architect style, another game from kickstar success; or even Minecraft) we have medium to big upgrades twice a year.

I hope this can be seen as the constructive criticism from someone that wants this game to crush it big time. And sooner rather than later.

This PDF will give you a pretty basic understanding of print design, and creating a portfolio, and it's free!
http://www.portfoliohandbook.com/PortfolioHandbook_UCID12.pdf


i've grabbed a stack off my shelf, i'll list a few here

[Thinking with type] (http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-2nd-revised-expanded/dp/1568989695) (Typography)

[Layout Workbook] (http://www.amazon.com/Layout-Workbook-Real-World-Building-Graphic/dp/1592533523/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374116370&sr=1-1&keywords=layout+workbook+a+real-world+guide+to+building+pages+in+graphic+design) (Typography & Page Layouts)

[Production for Graphic Designers] (http://www.amazon.com/Layout-Workbook-Real-World-Building-Graphic/dp/1592533523/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374116370&sr=1-1&keywords=layout+workbook+a+real-world+guide+to+building+pages+in+graphic+design)
(This one is more technical, Printing, Final Art Production, Etc.)

[Designing with Type] (http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Type-5th-Essential-Typography/dp/0823014134/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374116474&sr=1-1&keywords=designing+with+type) (Typography)

[Type & Image] (http://www.amazon.com/Type-Image-Language-Graphic-Design/dp/0471284920/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374116510&sr=1-1&keywords=type+and+image) (Combining Typography & Imagery)

[Color & Type for the Screen] (http://www.amazon.com/Color-Type-Screen-CD-ROM-Digital/dp/2880463297/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374116649&sr=1-1&keywords=color+and+type+for+the+screen) (Web Typography)

[The Element of User Experience] (http://www.amazon.com/Elements-User-Experience-User-Centered-Design/dp/0321683684/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374116686&sr=1-1&keywords=elements+of+user+experience+by+jesse+garrett) (User Experience/Web Design)

[Don't Make Me Think] (http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Me-Think-Usability/dp/0321344758/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374116719&sr=1-1&keywords=dont+make+me+think) (User Experience/Web Design)

There are also a ton of threads here on Reddit about Design books alone, and there is still the rest of the internet!
These are most of the books I got from my first two years at well respected design program, some are more helpful than others. But it doesn't hurt to read!

Also if you really want to give this a shot, work your ass off! Know that there is someone out there that is willing to (and probably is) working harder at it than you! Design is just like any other field of business, you gotta put in the work to get what you want.

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Welcome to our corner and feel free to share your experience, opinion or tip about how to control your internet usage instead of being controlled!

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I think that there are many ways of learning UX. What I have found that I use most often is googling something like "Modern web design UX" and I try and recreate those myself and so my brain just knows what to do. Here are some cool books I have read that I found very useful.
https://www.amazon.com/Things-Designer-People-Voices-Matter/dp/0321767535/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1509069574&sr=1-1&keywords=100+Things+Every+Designer+Needs+to+Know+About+People%E2%80%8A%E2%80%94%E2%80%8A+Susan+Weinschenk

and

https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/1118766571/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=T2H4X09K5XV9Y2HPT56N

good luck friend

The best book by someone who's been commercially successful is Designing Games, by Tynan Sylvester of Rimworld: https://smile.amazon.com/Designing-Games-Guide-Engineering-Experiences/dp/1449337937/

It is the best at actually applying all of the navelgazing people tend to do when talking about game design and art and theory and so forth towards actually creating compelling structures and content for games.

I have been learning UI/UX all summer.

• To get your mind chugging in the right direction and to get an idea of the purpose of UI/UX The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
  
  
  
• Good Design Patterns for Interface Design, alot of case studies good to have in as a ref Designing Interfaces
  
  
• Good place to start learning Interaction Design Elts of UX
  
  
• Good to read after you have a better idea of UX Jon Kolko

It's sad, isn't it?

But still, there is a lot more to the Internet than just consumption and advertising. Wikipedia has changed how we approach something so boring as an encyclopedia. Stackoverflow is the Q&A site - spawning many more under the StackExchange roof (or maybe you're more a Quora-type?). edX, Coursers, MIT OpenCourseWare and many more make it easier to get access to top-notch information (although you still have to study it yourself).

Google Maps brought cheap navigation to the masses and my be the best tool at our disposal to help the ever-increasing traffic jams.

Facebook has the potential to create diverse communities around the most obscure things.

And then there's Reddit - a plethora of communities of interest culminating into one front page.

The Internet (just like any other medium) is what you make of it.

P.S.: If I may suggest a book on this The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.

That's a problem with the definition of "intelligence" and not with whether our "brain abilities" have biological limitations or not.

What we should be discussing is how easy people blame their genes for their shortcomings before they first rule out other potential problems, such as short attention span due to bad habits or impatience due to upbringing because yes, turns out if you condition yourself to scroll Reddit for funny pictures and cats you will eventually find anything else that doesn't give you that rush boring and will blame yourself for lacking in the attention span department. A great book that talks about that is The shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.

You reminded me of a coworker I had who kept insisting that I should do an IQ test and I told him that it doesn't fucking matter how much I score because at the end of the day here I am getting paid for peanuts to fix computers. Like, if I scored high I would just get more depressed and if I scored low I would feel lucky for even having this job. I'm more of the type of person who judges himself from his actions, not "potential".

And to be honest, you don't even need to be gifted to work and sustain yourself in the long run in any profession unless you really care about procuring exceptionally great results such as winning the gold medal in the Olympics.

"Patience is a muscle" is a great metaphor, but what you're really doing is rewiring your brain. Your brain is very malleable and it can be retrained via repeated effort.

I highly recommend Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength and The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains if you want to learn more about the science of it.

This video examines the history of creativity in game design, the evolution of genres, and how game designers can be creative in the future. It combines Raph Koster's GDC talk about practical creativity, with insights from books as varied as Tynan Sylvesters designing games, to Micheal Sellers Advanced game design, to suggest that the key to the future of creativity in video games is understanding our past.

​

Raph Kosters GDC talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyVTxGpEO30

Tynan Sylvester's Designing games https://www.amazon.ca/Designing-Games-Guide-Engineering-Experiences/dp/1449337937

Erin Hofmman's Gdc Talk Precision of Emotion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP-LNRtwpb8

Gdc talk Design in Detail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJhpMmVLMZQ

​

There are About 25 other links in the description of the video as well, all pertaining to the history and future of game design

It does in the sense that, very often, for video games the goal isn't to create artificial intelligence, but simulate human player behavior. Usually CPU cycles are reserved for graphics, physics, etc. As GPU's get more powerful and graphics start to plateau, I think you could do some pretty deep AI. But I'd point out I think NN is the wrong form of AI implementation (ironically enough a major feature of a hobby project game of mine is sophisticated AI; but not learning AI).

The silly strategies the bot developed, btw, where basically randomly firing and moving towards and away from other players. Because a NN doesn't have short-term memory, the AI couldn't take stock of the level and learn spawn locations, ambush locations, etc. It had to come up with a general strategy to apply in any situation. It also had no ability to assess threat, though it would prioritize targets.

Furthermore Neuralbot used genetic algorithms and generational death using kill-count as a fitness score. There's a number of issues with that as well. Imagine a bot that was sophisticated enough to dodge all incoming attacks. That is definitely worth breeding with the highest kill count. But using the GA and fitness approach would lead to its death. So you need to come up with some better fitness score, and a better breeding program. Which is basically what I tried to do when I was a teenager and I wanted to learn this stuff. But running multiple Quake2 servers on my crappy PC didn't really work out.

Anyone it's an interesting topic, thanks for bringing it up.

Edit: And BTW none of this is meant to be condescending to Neuralbot. I nearly shit myself when I first started playing with it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever! And it really did inspire me to push some of my programming skills. I keep the site bookmarked for nostalgia purposes. But as I got further into AI I became more disenchanted with it. The book Behind Deep Blue really put me off to it. There's still a lot of research to be done in the field that is wayyyyyy beyond me.

You were probably able to focus better in some subtle ways reading a hard copy, but since text is text, and meaning is meaning, in the end the responsibility to focus or not focus is on you, on the individual.

Maybe you'd be interested in this. I've read it, and it's pretty good in my opinion, if a few years old now. http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains-ebook/dp/B003R7L90I

good luck with the video games. I suggest reading The Shallows it details what the internet does to the neuro-plasticity of the brain. Super enlightening read!

I agree with others that you should just start trying to make games, even if they're clones of other games to get you started. Stay small. Smaller than you think you can handle even. Don't make your first game your massive 100 hour JRPG epic.

​

A great book is A Theory of Fun, also. Good luck! And don't get discouraged when it gets tough!

I know it might seem counterintuitive to offer someone who is having trouble focusing and reading a book recommendation, but I had a similar (though less serious) situation a few months ago when I came across the book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Caar. In addition to cultivating healthy habits that have been offered here, I'd suggest looking over some of Carr's work. I felt that a deeper understanding of how my use of technology affects my brain helped me limit my personal Internet usage, increase my focus, and allowed me to get back into reading with a stronger passion.

If you want to be a game designer, just first accept that you're training for a marathon not a sprint.

Start with small exercises, not a full game just, like, quick sketches of game mechanics or ideas.

Do lots of tutorials, like "how to make a shmup in [whatever game engine]" and then when you finish the tutorial just add one or two things to make it your own, then move on to another tutorial.

After a few of those, start participating in 48 hour game jams.

There's a site I participated in for a bit called 1 Game a Month in which the idea was simply to finish one game a month. Not a masterpiece every month, just something finished every month.

It really is worth it to invest time in learning how to actually finish a project as opposed to always thinking about finishing it.

I recommend reading the following short articles:

The Chemistry of Game Design

Understanding Challenge

And I recommend the following books, not necessarily to read cover to cover but to read until the content doesn't seem to interest you, then just kinda skip around to the interesting bits:

Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Braithwaite

The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell

And finally I recommend reading this book from cover to cover:

A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster

The suggestions from /u/random (wow that username!) are both great books and you should also check out Ralph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Design. Though not specific to game design, you might also be interested in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

This isn't necessarily related to computer science- but it's a book about the effect computers, and technology in general have had over humanity. It's called The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Super interesting read, gives a lot of cool perspective.

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750/ref=zg_bs_3508_19?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=72HMTJQ0YSB5JCKGP45W

Reading books of course, it will greatly improve your ability to focus which has been really harmed by internet surfing. You may also work on improving some marketable skills, like programming, graphics design, etc., whatever you choose. To dive more into those topics I recommend you to read Cal Newport's books, especially Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, he also has interesting blog: calnewport.com/blog, old posts touch this topic in more depth. Another book that I would like to recommend you is The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains which will show you how damaging internet can be.

Here are a few:

Elements of User Experience, Jesse James Garret: What a typical experience design process is made up of.

Designing Interactions, Bill Moggridge: Seminal thoughts on Interaction Design, holds up to this day

Don't Make Me Think, Steve Krug: One of the first books to gave the issues of IA and UX design a human, customer point of view.

About Face, Alan Cooper: Another take on the whole process, dives a bit deeper into every stage than Garret's book.

Designing For The Digital Age, Kim Goodwin: Human-centered digital products

Sprint, Jake Knapp: A condensed prototyping methodology

100 Things To Know About People, Susan Weinschenk: How people think

There are a few more Product Design related books I recommended in another thread.

IDEO's design thinking methodologies are also a great resource:

Design Kit, A book and toolkit about human centered design

Circular Design, A guide for holistic design, organization friendly.

Cheers

Designing Interfaces by Jennifer Tidwell is a fantastic book full of full color illustrated examples of both good and bad ways to design your interfaces. On top of that, she does a great job of discussing the pros and cons of each widget type, layouts, visual ordering, etc. Definitely worth the read.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

100% relevant book. I can highly recommend reading it. There's an audiobook out for your car stereo too.

The man analyzes the interdependency between information technology and intellectual culture. The major historical paradigm shifts from storytelling to written story, to professional literacy, to mass printed books and mass literacy and finally automated information networks and their increased ease of use. With focus on the latter.

The way we work with information substantially changes with the tools we use to work with them. These tools become an integral part of us, we outsource functions to them and use the freed power for other processes. Always.

If she's interacting with a lot of users I would suggest reading Practical Empathy. Observing the User Experience is another great resource for learning about user research. User experience is all about people so it's always a good idea to read up on human behavior, psychology, cognition, perception, learning and memory etc. e.g. books like Hooked, Bottlenecks, Design for the mind, Designing with the mind in mind, 100 things every designer needs to know about people, 100 more things every designer needs to know about people, Thinking fast and slow, Predictably Irrational and I would also recommend Articulating design decisions and Friction.

Thanks for sharing!

These are resources that helped me better understand game design:

This is about the gamificaiton of non-game designs. But it really expounds on what makes it a game as opposed to other activities (play or work for instance):
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/9-5-theses-on-the-power-and-efficacy-of-gamification/

RPG Design Patterns:
http://rpg-design-patterns.notimetoplay.org/

The Theory of Fun for Game Design book:
https://smile.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449363210/ref=sr_1_1

Mirror Worlds is a book from 1992 by David Galernter. The dude had quite a lot figured out then, and some of his ideas inspired movies like The Matrix.


Long story short, mirror worlds are virtual copies of reality where we can run infinite experiments. Something companies like SpatialOS are trying to market with their technology's ability to simulate a bagillion(or is it bajillion?) entities all interacting in a complex system. Innovation accelerant.

+1 for Challenges for Game Designers, that book is great!

Designing Games was also another one that I found was pretty good.

My best award on the subject goes to:

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Mechanics-Advanced-Design-Voices/dp/0321820274

Otherwise, I like how the balance is described in

https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Games-Guide-Engineering-Experiences/dp/1449337937/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492365738&sr=1-1&keywords=designing+games

and

https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Lenses-Second/dp/1466598646/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492365764&sr=1-1&keywords=art+of+game+design

You might want to check out the quite excellent book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brians.

It's written well, and well researched with a lot of supporting references to the underlying studies that have been done. Some of it creeped me out a bit and actually got me off the computer a bit more and out into nature more.

Edit: fixed incorrect formatting code

Well, it is a fact that we can process information much faster by reading. Although, on the internet, we don't really "read" per se. We skim articles and look for key sections. Nicholas Carr thinks that's a bad idea.

With that said, I think the attention span is higher for older demographics than younger ones. This is partly why things like Snapchat, Vine etc.. is much more popular among the younger crowd. The beauty of the internet is that, it really doesn't matter what medium you use to create content -- as long as it's high quality, it will eventually find an audience.

I would also be interested in seeing some data on media consumption preferences.

One of my favorites is Designing Interfaces. It focuses on user patterns, not all are necessarily for the web, but it provides a good basis of user interaction theory/reasoning. It's also great when you're stuck for ideas on how to approach an interaction problem. This is super-useful for designing web apps, but is still useful for straight-up web stuff.

(I also noticed that there's a Designing Web Interfaces book, which I haven't read, but could be interesting.)

Same boat, man; my eyes tend to skip around paragraphs and sentences trying to get the 'gist' of something, not like real reading.

If it's not too weird to recommend a book to someone having trouble with reading - I'd really recommend The Shallows; What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains. There are audio versions of it, if that helps!

It really put into perspective how your daily habits influence the way your mind works, and vice versa. Really interesting, 100% recommend.

Quit Facebook. Quit Instagram. Sure as fuck works.

I've been porn-free since mid-October last year except for one relapse day. You know what triggered that 70-day-streak-breaking relapse? Someone posted a picture of themselves in a bikini on Facebook.

I'm on my second longest streak now. I know now that facebook and instagram can lead to relapses and can lead to dopamine fixes that harm my recovery processes. Even after quitting facebook, you still have to face media or pictures everywhere on earth that may have nsfw or triggering content. The solution? Avert your eyes. Whenever you feel you're doing something for a dopamine rush, be mindful of that and be honest to yourself that that's why you're doing it. Once you're mindful, you'll automatically stop looking. It'll take some practice, but you'll get there.

Another thing that I read on a quit-facebook forum is that once you actively filter out the shit and noise on your facebook feed, it becomes really empty and really boring and you'll quit on your own because there's no constant novelty and click-bait. Maybe that'll help you abstain or even quit, should you choose to. Also, Read this book. It's an amazing read about internet addiction and how its affecting our cognition.

I would recommend starting with Elements of User Experience. It'll give you a great overview of UX design.

Then, to go into even more detail, I'd recommend About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design. It's much more practical and detailed.

Those were two of the books we used when we built the [User Experience Design Immersive program at General Assembly] (https://generalassemb.ly/education/user-experience-design-immersive)

I had an intro course in interaction design at my college, and we used This Book

Not sure if that is helpful or not.

As for programming, as far as I learned in my introduction course, rapid prototyping is much more important than deep programming knowledge.

The ability to make a quick mock-up seems to be what you are looking for, so something web-based, that'll allow you to edit templates on a code level may be useful

The Scharff and Dusek reader has been mentioned, but I'd like to put a plug in for the Kaplan reader as well.

The following are also worth checking out...

Peter Paul Verbeek's What Things Do (this is my "if you only read one book about Phil Tech, read this book" book)

Michel Callon's "The Sociology of an Actor-Network"

Don Ihde's Technology and the Lifeworld

Andy Feenberg's Questioning Technology

Albert Borgman's Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life

Martin Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology"

Lewis Mumford's Technics and Civilization

Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society

Langdon Winner's "Do Artifacts Have Politics" and The Whale and the Reactor

Hans Jonas' "Technology and Responsibility"

Sunstein and Thaler's Nudge

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death

Nicholas Carr's The Shallows and The Glass Cage

Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows talks about this at length. It's backed up by some pretty solid science and does an excellent job tracing the history of the written word, and its relationship with our physiology and consciousness, up to the modern age. The book is biased by the "Baby Boomers are inherently less vapid than Millennials" mentality but it's definitely worth a read.

Well, it's true that any well-designed game does that. Here is a wonderful book on that and other topics from the world of game design.

I guess the question is whether it's exploited or not.

And a further question is: should we consider it exploitation if the goal is just to keep the user playing the game for long periods of time? I think the answer to this is yes, but you may not, and that's okay.

It sounds like neither of us are okay letting our kids play unlimited amounts of video games with no supervision, so we're both doing the right thing.

Nice rundown. Here are some other books I would recommend OP check out:

• Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
  
• Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
  
• Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
  

I picked up your book recently. I think this discussion just pushed it to the top of my reading list. More insight on how hidden mechanics lead to in game results vs. human perceptions/internal thought process will be good.

Keep on coding man, great game.

All excellent methodology. I would add, if you need some "book" resources:

• About Face, the classic book on interaction design, newly revised.
  
• Just Enough Research by Erika Hall - if you have neither the time nor the budget for proper full user research, this will get you going.
  
• Steve Krug's two books Don't Make Me Think and Rocket Surgery Made Easy.
  
• Since fintech deals with a lot of visualizations, you want to reduce clutter and chartjunk. Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and Envisioning Information are both excellent guides.
  

Tynan Sylvester also wrote my favorite book on game design, which touches on emergence quite a bit. He has a simple, but good definition: "Emergence is when simple mechanics interact to create complex situations." Title is appropriate, Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences

https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Games-Guide-Engineering-Experiences/dp/1449337937/

If you're looking for books (not that you said you were) I definitely recommend O'Reilly's Designing Interfaces, by Jennifer Tidwell. It does a good job of breaking down both what elements are available, but also what problems they're trying to solve - which is especially valuable when discussing design with others.

/r/Thameus is spot on. Way too many people confuse the Internet with the Web.

The Internet essentially consists of mid-level (layer 3 and layer 4) network stack protocols. Those protocols are often referred to as TCP/IP, but there are several more layer 4 protocols than TCP (UDP, SCTP, NORM, etc.).

The web is an application level (layer 7 in the OSI model) protocol. It's main application layer colleague is e-mail, but there are several others.

The Internet is a specific instantiation of what's called packet switching. This is contrasted to the old telephone networks' circuit switching.

The Internet was not always a done deal; the Internet is not the only instantiation of packet switching. This is grossly over simplifying what happened, but there was a huge, huge battle in the '80s/'90s between the Telcoms (who wanted to use another packet switching scheme based on something called X.25), and the DARPAnet guys who wanted to use the TCP/IP open standards.

So the question you probably want to ask is: when was packet switching thought up?

In terms of the Web, there's a computer scientist named David Gelernter who wrote a book in 1993 called, "Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean ", that actually pre-saged the Web (although I haven't seen any indication that Tim Berners-Lee was thinking of this when he created hypertext).

It's all very interesting stuff, but the key is to distinguish between the various layers and components.

Hmm, off the top of my head...

• Designing With the Mind in Mind
  
  
• The Design of Everyday Things
  
  
• 52 Weeks of UX
  
  You may also find some useful stuff over at hackdesign.org.
  
  And as for programming, Learn Python the Hard Way is a good place to start.

There's a book called The Shallows that goes into how spending excessive amounts of time on the internet actually rewires our brain in the same way doing anything for long periods of time does (such as practicing a musical instrument), except this rewiring causes us to lose our ability to focus and maintain our attention span for long periods of time.

While I didn't quit social media entirely, it did make me be more cognizant of the amount of time I spend on social media and reddit. In fact, I think I hardly go on Facebook anymore, and I don't mindlessly click through links on reddit anymore.

Great book, I highly recommend it.

Well, to paraphrase this book, the way the internet (and tv. think cnn with all those news tickers) deliver information to our brains creates new neural pathways that become accustom to so much information and input bombarding us at once. It's easy to get distracted reading a Wikipedia article and click a link to a related (or unrelated) topic.

Did it make you stupid? No.

How do you learn to think again? Practice. Force yourself to concentrate and soon it will become more automatic. I find it easier to force myself with an actual book of some length (ie, not the internet). Pick something that will hold your interest for awhile. It won't work if the book is too heavy or boring. A bunch of people have enjoyed The Game of Thrones series. Maybe you could give those a spin.

First, define who you need to interview. Do you need a mix of ages and genders? Do you need people who are early adopters? Do you need people who are in the VR/AR space? What sort of target market do you need to test the waters for?

Second, you need to recruit. Talk to participant recruiting agencies in advance - usually they need ~2 weeks to secure and schedule participants. $150 would be a reasonable honorarium per participant for 3 hours, but you will have to pay the agencies above and beyond what you give participants. Otherwise, you can go the cheaper Craigslist route and send out a screener questionnaire (to screen out the people you don't want), then call or email the people who you want to talk to. Follow up 2 days in advance with each participant to confirm attendance. As a last resort, you can use the "friends and family" recruit method. But since you have time, I would highly discourage that.

Third, you need someone to conduct the studies: drop $40 on the Handbook of Usability Testing if you are going to try conducting the interviews yourself. (Be wary of leading questions - it doesn't matter how much money you throw at a study if the interviewer / moderator is not able to collect good data.) Or, hire a contract UX Researcher; you would need a much higher budget for that, but it is well worth the money.

Source: am a UX Researcher

Pretty much anything from https://rosenfeldmedia.com/ will get you started. TBH the methodologies for formative research are going to be very similar to what your used to in anthropology. What will come in handy is reading up on usability testing.

A Practical Guide to Usability Testing
https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Usability-Testing/dp/1841500208

Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests
https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Usability-Testing-Conduct-Effective/dp/0470185481/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MHNVG7XHCDRDF3859YRW

In terms of design, A book of lenses is definitely a fantastic pick. I also read through: Engineering experiences, this helped me a lot design-wise. Also, of course, Game programming patterns is a must read for any programmer.

Silence on the Wire. Not a whole lot of practical information, but it gives amazing insight into the proper mindset.

If you enjoyed the article, Nick Carr wrote a follow-up book called The Shallows which expands greatly on his argument. One of the best books I read last year.

The Shallows by Nicholas Carr explores this idea. It's a pretty good read.

Social media is a good call, but I actually think it's not only that, but browsing in general - it's been very well described in a book called The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. I'd recommend to minimise browsing the internet and try to replace it with reading longer texts (yes, it's quite ironic to give this advice on Reddit).

How would you describe your attention span/focus in general?

Tynan I am a huge fan of Rimworld as well as your book which everyone should check out

Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences https://www.amazon.com/dp/1449337937/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_wh1XBbJFPD7ZB


If you don't mind, any hint on what is next for you? Any glimpse at what your next endeavor might be?

Sigh, I'd love to sit and explain how small hurdles add up, how extra delays and steps have more impact than they appear, and how there are frequent exceptions to assumptions like those you've made, but I don't think it's productive use of our time (either for me to create it or for you to read it). There are some great books on the subject if you ever get the inclination.

It's 'cause the internet has shifted the capacity of our brains away from deep focus and towards shallow multitasking. It's why we do shit like close Reddit on our computers then pull out our phones and open Reddit again without thinking about it. If you're really curious to learn more about it, try to stay focused long enough and read The Shallows; If you're really interested in pushing back then look into meditation.

I'll hop on the game design book recommendation bandwagon and suggest Designing Games. It's less popular, but much more useful IMO.

Sounds like a pile of B.S.

I encourage reading http://amazon.com/Behind-Deep-Blue-Building-Computer/dp/0691118183 (if you don't want to purchase it, visit a library and request it).

Our very own E-Book HERE has a lot of helpful stuff on getting started!

I'd also recommend the following:

http://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-book-lenses/dp/0123694965/

http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449363210/

I just saw this book recommended. It looks very interesting. I have to find a way to solve my problem...

I have no idea what the heck you're talking about.

It's not to say there aren't some who have strong opinions about style, form and function. I myself, being a software developer who has done a lot of mobile software development, have some very strong opinions about how to make a good user interface. (But that's because I've been doing this sort of stuff for 30 years or so. And most of my strong opinions can be boiled down to buy this book, consider user interface interaction a formal language with nouns and verbs, and don't make the buttons on the phone too small because they'll be hard to press.)

But the vast majority of Americans I've met don't have strong opinions or are "aggressive" (whatever the hell that means) about design.

I had a thread about this not too long ago

From there, I suggest Tynan Sylvester's Engineering Experiences

And I still think Ian Schrieber's [Game Design Concepts series] (https://gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/level-1-overview-what-is-a-game/) is a masterclass

There is a lot of great information out there, and there is also so much chaff to sift through. Of course, Richard Garfield would remind us that we also need to play every game.

>"Game designers should train themselves to think out of the mold, but it's naive to think that you profit by not even knowing what the mold is."
-- Richard Garfield

I was just about to recommend the same. To append more to your comment, OP can start with their playlist on UX design.

I would also recommend:

• Elements of User Experience
  
• Master Class with Jesse James Garrett
  
• Don't Make Me Think, Revisited by Steve Krug

Hey, thanks for your insight. Just to make sure, is it this the book you were referring to? https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750.

About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design is a great primer, with lots of "this is how you do it" step-by-step for each step of the process.

Example: http://imgur.com/Sz9j8wR

Can recommend two books if you’re after more practices examples.

https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Interaction+Design%3A+Beyond+Human+Computer+Interaction%2C+4th+Edition-p-9781119020752 (or earlier edition - I know the 3rd edition and would recommend it).

Also

Human-Computer Interaction https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0130461091/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Om3TAbHWPTF4V


Both form a large chunk of my research and were what my university courses were based off of.

My two cents:
Big thing is designing with the user not for them. Reflecting and co-creating (working with all the stakeholders at a cooperative level). Practical experience with design experts > reading the books.

This doesn't match up with the account in "Behind Deep Blue." http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Deep-Blue-Building-Computer/dp/0691118183

That book describes the move search algorithms in detail and explains that because there was extra time, Deep Blue searched some non-profitable portions of the game tree and found an even better move. Kasparov had come to assume that computers always pruned the game tree based on maximum profitability of move and shouldn't have made that move.

Fantastic book by Nicolas Carr called "The Shallows" which deals heavily with how technology has influenced how we think, perceive, and retain information. link is here!

*edit link fixed

Agreed!

I would also recommend a book called Designing Games, A guide to engineering experiences by Tynan Sylvester:

http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Games-Guide-Engineering-Experiences/dp/1449337937

The research is there. You can:

• Watch the Ted Talk
  
• See how excessive masturbation destroys willpower
  
• Read about how the way we surf the internet/porn literally changes our brain's structure.
  
• Research how excessive masturbation contributes to adrenal fatigue
  
  And many other benefits. I'm sure if you google around you'll find the relevant research. Not having it shoved in your face by advertisements or school like smoking was doesn't mean you can ignore what's out there.
  
  Saying it's bad makes us look like a cult? I think it would be worse if we DIDN'T have this research but everyone was around chanting the praise of not fapping.

https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449363210

A much faster read, with pictures, but will give you a good framework for thinking about design.

This book is amazing: http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Second-Edition-Understanding/dp/0124079148

It's funny, I remember having conversation in my journalism classes about how freeing it would be to present content online, because we would have no limits on length. We never once considered that people wouldn't have the attention spans to absorb that extra content. Now, here we are 20 years later, and longform journalism is struggling.

(An aside: If you're interested in that notion of how the Internet is shortening our attention spans, check out The Shallows by Nick Carr).

Books: Theory of Fun for Game Design and The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

The article linked at the bottom of the post was used as a launching point for an entire non-fiction book called The Shallows (not related to the upcoming movie). It's same author.

I strongly recommend reading it. Or at least read the full article if you can't get the book.

I really enjoyed Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences by Tynan Sylvester. (The dude behind Rimworld.)

He gives you a lot to think about without ever coming off as pretentious or preachy.

You might take a look at Nicholas Carr's 2011 book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brain. The same author also has a new book out on the effects of automation in general on the human brain. Carr's 2011 book was a finalist for the Pulitzer, though it's not without it's detractors -- at the very least, it cites a lot of research and should give you some background on some of the major researchers and ideas in the field. BTW, I think the field is called Human-Computer Interaction (and that's what Amazon calls books on this topic), though HCI also covers making computers and technology easier for people to use.

You mean like this one?
;)

This should get you started :)

Books:

• The Design of Everyday Things
  
• Don't Make Me Think
  
• About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design
  
  
  Blogs:
  
  
• Smashing Magazine
  
• A List Apart
  
• Boxes and Arrows
  
• Bokardo (by Joshua Porter)
  
• UX Booth
  
• Whitney Hess
  
• UX Magazine
  
  Videos:
  
  
• An Event Apart videos
  
• Luke W's mobile UX videos
  
• UX Mobile Immersion videos
  
  Podcasts:
  
  
• The UX Intern
  
• The Big Web Show
  
  
  I'm also writing blog posts about getting started in UX Design on my own blog. Check it out. If you have questions or want to know more about a specific topic, just let me know. I'm always looking for more topics to write about.
  
  Edit: Added UX Mag

Designing Visual Worlds by Bartle

Theory of Fun for Game Design by Koster is a classic and still largely valid

+anagrambros:

We both enjoyed reading Silence on the Wire: https://www.amazon.com/Silence-Wire-Passive-Reconnaissance-Indirect/dp/1593270461

We both enjoyed reading Silence on the Wire: https://www.amazon.com/Silence-Wire-Passive-Reconnaissance-Indirect/dp/1593270461

Its hard for me to grasp what you are looking for. I'm even not sure if even you are (in extend of Frasca).

I have worked on a improved differentitation: Ludonarrative Synthesis

Additionally i prefer the differentitation (on the ludo side) into the four interactive forms. Paidi matches to toy.

Simulation is to me anything that tries to be realistic as it can be. Which is mostly boring. An interessting system or narravtion is never realistic.

About boredomness i recommend Raph Kosters Theory of fun.


Most words i used here, are meant in a very specific way. Not in colloquial language.

Been reading a book right now that talks about all of this - you guys should check it out (because we should all ALWAYS be reading something during our transformation :) )

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

I have in the past used GUI Bloopers as an entertaining guideline.

It happens to me a lot. I tend to just remember the highlights.

The book "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" [0] has a lot of insight into this process. Quick, easy access to lots of information doesn't always lend itself to retention.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

Someone had written a book about this.

Here is it's review.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/books/review/Lehrer-t.html?_r=0

And the book itself.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750


Some research points out that human brains have not evolved fast enough for the transition between regular books in physical form to the electronic text format.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/


And internet encourages us to multi task, which is not how our brains are designed.

All these factors contribute to the decline in concentration and comprehension.

Mindfulness meditation is supposed to remedy this situation, of only we could get off FB and reddit for 20 min a day.

139557749| > United States Anonymous (ID: EwRHxNzN)

>>139557219
>internet is cocaine
You're not the first person to have thought of this.
https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

It's a bit old, but Silence on the Wire is a great read about indirect attacks such as keyboard monitoring (amongst many others)

These are interesting and insightful reads:

https://www.amazon.com/MMOs-Inside-Out-Massively-multiplayer-Role-playing/dp/1484217233/

https://www.amazon.com/MMOs-Outside-Massively-Multiplayer-Role-Playing-Psychology/dp/1484217802

Might be available cheaper at some other locations -- google Bartle mmo book

Also Raph Koster's more universal video game book:
https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449363210/

She might be interested in this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Video-Games-Pac-Man/dp/159962110X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381262117&sr=8-1&keywords=video+games+are+art

Or even this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Game-Design-lenses/dp/0123694965/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1381262117&sr=8-6&keywords=video+games+are+art

Possibly even this:

http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Game-Design-Raph-Koster/dp/1449363210/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381262296&sr=1-4&keywords=games+are+fun

I am a 65F gamer - let her know she's missing out if she ignores video games. Not only fun but uses the mind in ways older people tend to use rarely or stop using at times. The challenge of video games keeps the brain firing on all circuits. Puzzles, quests, challenge, etc., all combine to not only entertain but also to teach and to broaden thinking in general :)

I have a similar problem to yours, but it centers more on social media than the internet as a whole. Between random memes, constant political posts/debates, and the generally atheist/anti-religious tones of everything I read, it can be very discouraging and distracting. Particularly if I waste valuable time going down the rabbit hole of comments. Taking breaks from social media has been helpful to me, and it's timely that you've posted this, because I'm considering doing so again.

Related to this, I recommend a great book called The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains which dives into how the habit of quickly scrolling for small bites of info and moving on can damage our attention spans. Like how people put "TL;DR" at the end of posts because readers get turned off by "walls of text".

Prayers and best wishes to you on regaining your digital footing.

You're absolutely right. The phenomenon is covered well in Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

Yup, passive reconnaissance is quite different from those other programming books ;)

That entire smug sub needs to read this

The book is $53.74 on amazon http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0470665769 The painting is $395 http://fineartamerica.com/featured/thoughts-in-passage-ii-michael-john-march.html

Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Games-Guide-Engineering-Experiences/dp/1449337937

It could be due to how the internet age is changing our brains. No longer do we need to rely on memory as much when we can do a search and be ninja-like in our fact finding. The brain is like any other muscle, and when you don't use certain parts, they grow weaker. I work an accounting job and I make sure to do memory exercises because I started noticing the same thing.

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

And of course, always check with a doctor to make sure nothing's structurally changed in your brain.

Once you sober up from all that weed, you might want to read this - it's basically a cogent version of what you're talking about here.

Start with Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

Then read GUI Bloopers 2.0, Second Edition: Common User Interface Design Don'ts and Dos

Then possibly The Design of Everyday Things

And follow up with The Non-Designer's Design Book

Raveofthrones to-do list for 08/04/2014:

• Read and take notes on The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains for my summer writing class.
  
  
• Speak to three new people today
  
  
• Do a load of laundry

https://www.amazon.com/Shallows-What-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750

You just reminded me where I learned this.

Lean UX

About Face - Essentials of Interaction Design

https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/1118766571

About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118766571/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_MRH7BbP7V5K81

Read Designing Games by the creator of RimWorld. If you can't afford to buy it, check your library; mine has the eBook.

You should check out Ralph Koster's A Theory of Fun, and Keith Burgun's Clockwork Game Design.

Those were the "eye openers" for me.

Don't Make Me Think

The Design Of Everyday Things

Designing Interfaces

Give Skipfish a try. It was written and open sourced by Michal Zalewski, author of Silence on the Wire.

Check out this book. Good read. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1449363210/ref=as_li_ss_tl_nodl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1449363210&linkCode=as2&tag=atheoroffunfo-20

It will probably look pretty retarded, judging by the way cell phone culture is rewiring brains. http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-Brains/dp/0393339750/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374247166&sr=8-1&keywords=the+shallows

I lead design teams, and have been a designer of many colors for years. I start EVERYONE that asks this question with Tufte, because he's Not a designer, explores information design (which UI design is largely a subset of, IMO) from various angles, and non-designers have heard of him on NPR or some other bullshit, so they feel "in the know" once they read a book, and get more interested. I don't agree with many of his assertions, but one could start off much worse. Next, Alan Cooper and Rob Reimann's About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design is excellent, also Moggridge's Designing Interactions (dated, but always applicable). There's plenty of other stuff out there, many of the Amazon "people who bought this" recs that show up on Rob's book are solid books by solid designers.

Edit: EVERYONE -> everyone not hired to do design that asks about it at work

Edit 2: There's a 4th edition of About Face, I just noticed. Really anything Alan or Rob do is excellent.

It's a scary validation of all the technological-dystopian theories like The Shallows. I used to be much more dismissive of the idea that facebook/media bubbles/instant gratification was hurting society.

But here we are.

Amazon links for the lazy:

Art of Game Design, 2nd Edition

Designing Virtual Worlds

A Theory of Fun

3D Game Engine Design

Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications

No offense, but just wait for 5 or 10 years and you'll see !

The porn industry know very well how the human brain works, and they use it against us. There are a lot of book dealing with this issue, you can check them out if you want :

• Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction
  
  
• The Porn Myth: Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy of Pornography
  
  Other books which explain how the makers of facebook, porn, twitter, videos games... hook us to their products
  
  
• Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked
  
  
• The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

You might want to read this book then:

The Shallows

Gives you an insight as to how the web has changed the way your brain works, reduced your attention span and makes it so much more difficult to focus on longer tasks (e.g. finishing a game).

This is the subject of the book "The Shallows", by Nicholas Carr. I don't completely agree with the guy, but it's thought provoking at least.


Ninja edit: Wait, I just saw the irony of recommending a book.

one of the things in his book is that a game should be a story that the player has some hand in (paraphrasing, a lot)

the tornado doesn't do squat for that. It's a cool concept but it doesn't tell a story, it doesn't interact with the player, and there's no sense of reward or difficulty in preventing it / countering it / recovering for it.

It's very much just a "YOU'RE SCREWED" stamp on the colony and you have to find a way to fix it.

>Feel free to lay out your case for this in great detail so I can tear it apart.

No need. Educate yourself. Start here.

Random internet user, feel free to tear apart Raph Koster book.

>However, Rare communicated and marketed heavily. I took in all that communication and marketing and they convinced me to purchase the game. A large number of people feel that their communication and marketing did not align with what they delivered. I could get a refund, but I believe in the future of the game so I choose not to and that is my choice.

That is not the impression I get at all, that they lied. Rather people were hoping there were more and got disappointed... This game has been well covered in alpha/beta and streamed.

> I could get a refund, but I believe in the future of the game so I choose not to and that is my choice.

That is your choice, but if you are unhappy with it I suggest you do get a refund. Vote with your wallet, because voting with your voice makes a lot of us others tired of hearing the same thing over and over. It is also likely more effective.

> If I have an accurate or inaccurate opinion, it is often that the business did something to contribute to that opinion even if it was inaccurate. So no matter what it is I think, I have in fact earned the ability to express it.

As I said, there is no "earning". Everybody has a right to their opinion. Earning suggest that someone else hasn't.

>Rare is better than this, so something is going on.

The one thing I was disappointed about is that they seemed to have indicated some sort of surprise with the Kraken, and then it turned out to just be a bodyless tentacles. I also wish the combat was a little tighter and less casually, but I think that is their design goal.

The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicolas Carr

Fascinating! And scary as hell. It has helped me to start cleaning up my mental hygiene habits in regards to screen time and helped me re-appreciate extended quiet concentration time.

@1. Mysle ze pytanie ktore trzeba zadac sobie najpierw to "czym jest dobry game design". Ile ludzi bedzie gralo w dana gre? Ile pieniedzy gra zarobi? Jaki efekt bedzie miala na graczach? Ogolnie polecam fora czy nawet subreddity typu /r/gamedesign. Sa tez kursy oferowane za darmo online przez powazne uczelnie np MIT. Z ksiazek polecam Theory of Fun i The Art of Game Design

@2 Tak, spojz na Notch'a ;)

@3 Rob male, proste gierki. Polecam "game jams" Nie wiem jakie to popularne w Polsce ale w Internecie jest tego sporo i po krotce chodzi o taki "sprint" (na przyklad 24 godzinny lub jedno-weekendowy) podczas ktorego celem jest zrobienie gdy na podstwie jakiego hasla lub protych ktryteriow. Znajdz innych ludzi i zamiast samotnie, pracuj w grupie powiedzmy trzech osob co by sie wzajemnie motywowac.

This is the list I have right now, but I might take something off before tomorrow.

Walden – Henry David Thoreau

The Blind Watchmaker – Richard Dawkins


The Shallows: What The Internet Is Doing To Our Brains – Nicholas Carr

Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics – John J. Mearsheimer

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster – Svetlana Alexievich

I am now. I was aware of his famous interview on Crossfire with William Buckley, but I didn't know his politics were expressed in his music.

I've read too much about media ecology to stomach the state of telecommunications as it stands today. While I primarily mentioned the capitalist appropriation of TV in my first comment, I think its much more than that. Even when we adopt socialism and kill advertising, TV must be eliminated as a medium of communication. It is inimical to rational thinking. It is inimical to learning and truly understanding. The way the brain processes information from the medium is inherently insidious.

Similar arguments can be made about computers and the internet. I'm not against telecommunications completely, but I am extremely cautious of new technology. Read these books, and you'll be scared of even touching your phone.

The Shallows

Alone Together

The Digital Divide

Distracted

The Dumbest Generation

As an engineer who became a socialist in large part because I saw that technology was being used to exploit the people I want to help, I can tell you that the question posed to mankind will be that of our relation to technology. We will already have tackled that problem indirectly when we deal with climate change, but that is really a problem of capitalism. We will have to confront it honestly when capitalism falls.