We selected some of the best publications related to videogames in a complicated year that, however, has been rich and eclectic in the most interesting proposals.
Who was going to tell us a few years ago, when the lists of the best video game books were made up of products from outside our lands. Since the Héroes de papel publishing house began operating in 2014 (there were select sporadic publications, such as those produced by Start), the literature on this medium that we love so much has only grown. It is common to find books from large publishers such as Dolmen or Planeta, also small ones such as Anait, Gamepress or Heroes de papel itself. A real joy that in 2020 also shows an enviable eclecticism. For a sample, the heterogeneous selection that we share below. Video games are also read.
Studies Seal
Heroes de papel inaugurated a few months ago its label dedicated to Game Studies. The process has been long and complex. Academic support is needed to certify the validity of proposals like this one. Thus, agreements have been signed with the Institute of Communication of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Observatory for Video Games and Entertainment Communication. Of course, and as the protocol governs in these cases, the collection is endorsed by an international scientific committee made up of researchers from different universities.
The four titles published so far are, in order of appearance: Homo Alien. Videogame and Gamification for the next cognitive hacking, by Flavio Escribano; The use of color in video games, by Emilio Labrador; Videogames and international conflicts, by Alberto Venegas and Antonio César Moreno. Finally and for now, Ideological Games. Videogames and ideology, by Paula Velasco and Antonio Flores Ledesma. Thinking the Game: 25 Paths to Game Studies has also appeared. Collective work coordinated by Víctor Navarro Remesal, it is the spearhead of a collection on the academic study of video games that will be published by the Shangrila Textos Apart publishing house.
Buy books from the Studies Seal and Think about the game
The book of graphic adventures
Gamepress, one of the publishers that puts the most love and care in their publications, brings us The Book of Graphic Adventures, a tribute to one of the most beloved video game genres. It is prefaced by Natalia Martinsson, co-founder of Killmonday Games, and is written in no less than ten hands by Raúl Muñoz, Carlos Climent, Jordi Marsal, René Hernández and Daniel Tortajada. Almost two hundred pages to condense more than three years of work. Profusely illustrated, 123 commented games among which we can find from the classics of Sierra or LucasArts to the most current productions such as the Deponia saga, we will also find among its pages interviews with creators such as Al Lowe, David Fox, Ramón Hernáez, Juanan Pascual and Toni Pascual… It even has a section dedicated to the ingenious anti-piracy systems that came with the games of the last century. Surely the oldest of the place remember the cardboard wheel with the keys to Monkey Island. Available in a standard and collector’s version, you have additional gifts if you buy The Book of Graphic Adventures directly on the publisher’s website.
Buy The book of graphic adventures
MSX: First Generation
And speaking of long-awaited things, here we have a work that claims the first stage of MSX. Written by José Manuel Fernández Spidey, possibly one of the most prepared people for it, the book unfolds in 380 pages full of images. We will find in them the origin and history of the machine, as well as a review of each of the games that came out for it in Japan. A tour de force that will excite those who lived their childhood with an MSX at home, but also those who study the history of video games and the simple amateur, both will find here a gold mine. You would have to ask the author, but it would be great if he had in mind or even was already working on MSX: Second Generation.
Buy First Generation MSX
Requiem for the final boss. Video Game Music Anthology
Another gift is this anthology of video game music, and no one better than a musician to write it. Edgar S. Fuentes proposes “a journey through 40 years of musical expression in video games, the total art that reigns in the 20th century” (we love this phrase). The book tells us about mythical sound departments (Konami, Sega, Namco, SNK, Atlus …), of the 8 and 16-bit eras, of the important leap that the CD represented with the arrival of 32-bit, orchestral music, live music tours, special sections dedicated to Zelda Ocarina of Time, Sonic, Castlevania and Final Fantasy. We find a significant number of proper names. From Uematsu and Kondo to Guiacchino going through what NIN did in Quake or the special touch of Team ICO. In games we have three-quarters of the same, an indecent number of references: Double Dragon, Mega Man, Panzer Dragoon, Jet Set Radio, Resident Evil, Shenmue, Nier, Xenoblade, Mass Effect, The Last of Us, etc, etc. Can it be even better than it sounds? Well yes, because the author has prepared a playlist on Spotify with the music discussed in the book to conveniently accompany the reading.
Buy Requiem for the final boss
Ludum Lex. The secrets of law applied to video games
Here we have one of those books that, once published, the question we ask ourselves is: How has there not been something like this until now? How could it be otherwise, it is written by two specialists on the subject, Darío López Rincón and Pablo Corrales Sánchez. It may be a niche product, but we are sure that not only will each of the video game companies in this country be made with it, but also all those who want to set up one. The bases for this are discussed here, the organization, contracts, intellectual property, copyrights, in short, the different legal layers that surround the creation of video games. Without cryptic language, it is understandable and practical. Ludum Lex is already an essential book for our environment.
Buy Ludum Lex
Interactive past. Memory and history in the video game
The prolific Alberto Venegas (we recommend another book of his released this year at the beginning of this report) long ago abandoned the writing of video games in public media like this one. He decided to focus on his academic career with the main focus on the relationship between History and video games. Alberto has made good use of his time, and we could say without fear of being wrong that he is, right now, the greatest expert in our country in what he made the center of his study. Interactive Past benefits from its academic focus on objective exposition, so given to positioning when dealing with historical or political issues. But it is also enjoyable for the general public, since, among other things, it displays some of its chapters through games known to all (Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed …). We are very clear that this Extremaduran will only give us joy in the times that are to come. Since years ago he began to focus his intentions with the creation of Presura, he has only grown to reach an enviable security and maturity. There is no sign of exhaustion, and we are happy.
Buy Interactive Past
Rockstar the video game star
Sofía Francisco, with some interesting self-posts to her credit on Gambling Dissonance and the Walking Simulators, debuts in Dolmen with the Rockstar story. Analyze the origins of the famous company and each title that has made it great. It also narrates the controversies inevitably associated with depending on which games, and the impact on the industry, on players and on society. There are 200 pages full of images that will delight Rockstar fans in particular and all video game fans in general.
Buy Rockstar the video game star
Paper Wasn’t Dead, Just Crumpled: The GTM and Manual Revolution
Israel Mallén self-publishes the chronicle of a success. The Guts of GTM and Manual, two of the best and most beloved publications on paper, are analyzed in this study by someone who knows them very well. The surprising (for some) support from the gaming community to two unique, different, fresh proposals that have revolutionized approaches and refolmulated ways of doing it is treated in a serious and exhaustive way in these pages. It is very possible that the GTM and Manual revolution will become a reference for independent entrepreneurs in the publishing market as well as in business and entrepreneurship classes at universities.
Buy The GTM Revolution and Manual
Game Over. The effects of Covid-19 in the video game sector
This book would have been classified as science fiction just a year ago. We are all looking forward to leaving 2020 behind with the strong and at the same time tense hope that 2021 cannot be worse. Guillermo Paredes self-publishes this journalistic study on the effects of the pandemic on the interactive entertainment industry. How large and small companies, eSports and major events have affected and adapted to the new circumstances; the users themselves, who turned games like Animal Crossing into a refuge … Maybe Game Over. The effects of Covid-19 in the video game sector go out of fashion over time, but right now it is fully present.
Buy Game Over
I give you the end of the world
We end with an unusual proposal: a novel that is based on the tropes of video games. It’s about I give you the end of the world, a fast-paced VR SciFi adventure set in an expansive No Man’s Sky / Elite Dangerous universe. Greeted by some critics such as the Spanish Ready Player One, it is a reversible book, that is, once the main story is finished, it can be turned around to continue on the other side (in the attached video you can see it more clearly). There, fourteen stories await us that enrich the plot and characters.
In the words of Flavio Escribano, founder of the now mythical collective Arsgames: This novel contains all the elements that are culturally identifiable by new generations of gamers, so we can say that it also belongs to a new batch of science fiction adventure stories among which the younger people can flow and feel part of it. I give you the end of the world may constitute a plausible evolution of works that will become classics such as Ready Player One and others that already are such as Permutation City.
Buy I give you the end of the world
The last explorer
2020 has also left us a book focused on one of the great video game heroines of the last 25 years: Lara Croft and her Tomb Raider saga. From the hand of Paula Saez, The last Exploradeora. A tour of the Tomb Raider saga details in great detail the evolution of this icon, turning the book into a unique opportunity to discover what is hidden behind all those jumps, investigations and unexplored places that we have visited with Croft from 1996 to 2018 , date of the publication of his last adventure so far.
The book has more than 200 pages and a foreword signed by Jen Herranz, and is focused on covering some of the lesser-known aspects of the series that goes beyond video games, such as movies, dozens of comics, magazines, novels and other merchandising products. A whole revolution in the nineties that in the last decade has managed to reinvent itself. And everything is collected in this book.
Buy The Last Explorer
As you have seen, there was no need to pull any foreign author to make this list. The production we have here is enough for us and we have plenty of it. Despite the great form of video game literature in our country, we did not want to miss two authentic classics that have been published in Spanish for the first time. This is Jacked. The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto and Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Successful and Turbulent Stories Behind Video Game Development. Until now, both were featured in select English bookstores. These are two essential works that have finally reached our lands this year. For the rest, play these days, but also read. They are two of the greatest pleasures that we can enjoy in the warmth of home in these dark days that we have had to live. Take good care of yourselves and be happy.
Other books from the Meristation team
And if you still want more books about videogames, we leave you a selection of other books published by members of the Meristation team:
- Pokémon – History and evolution of a phenomenon, by Sergio C. González (buy here)
- Final Round – The Legacy of Street Fighter, by Joaquín Relaño (buy here)
- The legacy of the white wolf, by Ramón Méndez (buy here)
- Zelda, behind the legend, by Salva Fernández (buy here)
- Final Fantasy: The Legend of the Crystals, by Pablo González (buy here)
