Saturday, September 5, 2009

When games and all things related go mainstream...

Ok ok I know gaming is now a main stream activity and we have people of all ages playing games, from the hard core gamers spending up to 10 hours per day in MMORPGs, to the casual 10 minutes gamers dropping by their Facebook accounts once every few days.

But do you know that even the library has stocked up many books about gaming? Barely a year ago, there were only 2-3 books on the book shelves about gaming. Today the National Library (near Bugis) actually stocks up many shelf sections about computer gaming and related materials.



We have books like Wii for Dummies, Massively Multiplayer for Dummies, many books about Second Life, Pac-man, virtual world books ...etc. Amazing. I am actually not sure if there is indeed such a huge demand for these books. I mean, many of the information could be found online, and most of the gamers should know how to get these ever-changing info online? No?

Other than just books about gaming itself, there are also other books about games development and programming. There are books about .NET development, games programming on Python, games level design, PSP hacks ...etc. I agree there is an increasing demand for these more specialised books since it is much harder to read and find information about games development and programming online. If anything there are just FAQs on some websites and forums, and not full chapters of in-depth discussions and info.



Oh well, now that there are many shelves of books about games in the library, aspiring game designers could borrow a few and try it out. :)

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