Reddit mentions of Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games

I highly recommend Masters of Doom, it covers the story of John Carmack and John Romero from their pre-id years up until around 2002 or so and goes over the development of early id games like Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake as well as other companies at the time like Apogee/3D Realms and Softdisk and of course Ion Storm, Daikatana and the issues with its development.

If you find that interesting i also recommend Jordan Mechner's Making of Karateka and Making of Prince of Persia. These are unique in that they are the journal that Jordan Mechner kept while making these games (start with the Karateka one, the PoP one continues more or less where the Karateka one ends) back in the 80s and early 90s up until he started working on The Last Express and give a unique look not only at how development was done at the time, but also how a very known at the time publisher - Brøderbund - was running during their later years (which sadly ended up collapsing in the midlate 90s just when The Last Express was released, which ended up with TLE becoming a commercial failure despite the critical praise it had, in large part because the marketing team left the company weeks before the game's release and nobody was around to market it :-P). Also there are several bits about Mechner's attempts on movie writing since that is another passion of his, although that wasn't as successful (he did write the Prince of Persia movie though and was a moderate success).

Another interesting book is Hackers. This is an older book, written in early 80s about the "computer hackers" that influenced modern computing. A large part of the book is about the earlier communities, like those at MIT from where the free software and open source movement began, but there is also a sizeable part about the early days of gaming companies that would later become powerhouses like Sierra and - again - Brøderbund. This last one is very interesting because you can see the shift from the early Brøderbund days in Hackers towards the more boureaucratic and sterile environment in their later days as shown in Mechner's journals. This also makes me curious about their last days and i'd like to see Mechner writing about the development of The Last Express if for no other reason than that.

Finally a book that i also liked a lot, although this one focuses more on a single genre and the games that make it up, is Dungeons and Desktops which focuses on the development of CRPGs from the early attempts at mainframes down to modern RPG games.

Computer and computer gaming history are favorite topics of mine and i tend to buy books about them (and i really like finding common pieces in different books).

I haven't read it myself yet but I've wishlisted Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games

Good list, I'd add:

Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System by Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost


More related to early computer gaming:

Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-playing Games by Matt Barton

Computer Gaming World magazine archives

Get Lamp, a documentary about adventures in text

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

Matt Barton's Youtube series about classic computer games

Here is your answer, straight from an academic in the field:

"1. Play Between Worlds- TL Taylor
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Play-Between-Worlds-Exploring-Culture/dp/0262512629/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303123694&sr=8-1
This one is based on a study of Everquest players and might not be relevant if they're interested solely in table top, but it is my all time favourite video game studies book and does have bits on online role play/avatar studies. I've also studied under the author- she's on my FB friends' list too!

2. Dungeons and Desktops by Matt Barton- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dungeons-Desktops-History-Computer-Role-playing/dp/1568814119/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303123917&sr=1-1
Historical time line of the development of RPGs- from early baseball stats games post WWII to WoW. Very comprehensive.

3. Shared Fantasy- Gary Alan Fine http://www.amazon.co.uk/Shared-Fantasy-Playing-Social-Worlds/dp/0226249441/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303124135&sr=1-1
This is probably the text they'd find most useful. Its a bit dated, but it deals with focus groups from D&D players about their experiences.

4. Medieval Fantasy as Performance by Michael A Cramer
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Medieval-Fantasy-Performance-Creative-Anachronism/dp/0810869950/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1303124316&sr=1-1
An account of (somewhat) LARP/ recreation as an expression of social identity."

EDIT: Waaagh!! Bloody reddit and its double-posting tricksiness...