The argument put forward is that when faced with too much choice people will often choose nothing at all rather than go to the effort of objectively weighing up the options and trying to come to a decision. I find this tends to stand up to my daily observations the most recent of which was a trip to the supermarket where my girlfriend asked me to choose some crisps and; faced with an entire aisle of choice, my brain completely shut down and refused to even try.

The book splits the world into two groups: Satisficers and Maximisers. Maximisers want to be sure that their decisions are the best they can possibly make even to the point of comparing them to imagined possbilities that don’t or can’t exist in reality. Satisficers have standards but don’t worry about whether or not they got the best deal just that their most important criteria have been met.

Satisficers tend to live a happier more fulfilled life because they spend less time worrying about things they can’t control while Maximisers tend to be more depressed and filled with buyers remorse.

This is similar to Perfectionism. Perfectionists strive for an unattainable ideal often at the expense of everything else. Perfectionism is in fact very bad for you unless you have some outside force that is willing to intervene when you get carried away.

Duke Nukem Forever suffered immensely from this. In an effort to create a “Perfect” videogame 3D Realms ditched a perfectly good game they believed wasn’t good enough and started over. Ultimately they never released anything. Perfectionists are doomed to be depressed and to hate the very things they help create because they will only ever focus on what is wrong with things. It is in fact a very pessimistic outlook on life and yet for some reason a trait that many claim to desire in the people they hire.

Well I guess that might be true so long as the person doing the hiring and cracking the whip isn’t themselves a perfectionist and has the guts to stand in front of a room full of perfectionists and tell them that what they have made is “Good Enough”  (There is no bigger insult to a perfectionist than being told what you have created is only “good enough”).

I’m a recovering perfectionist. I’m trying to get comfortable with the idea of letting things go in cases where changing them any more isn’t going to result in any significant gain or benefit. This doesn’t mean I won’t make something as good as I can possibly make it but it does mean that I’m more likely to recognise when further work is futile and instead take pride in what I have done rather than dwell on what I haven’t.

This is also by way of apologising for not posting any updates on my game. I had a perfectionist moment and decided to rewrite the entire code base so that it did everything it used to do but in a nicer way that nobody but me will ever care about.

Sorry. That would be the curse of perfectionism right there.

However research papers are often very dull and you ussually need to have a dictionary on hand to make sense of them. So here are ten books that aren’t about Games Design but will make you a better Games Designer…

Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

This is something of a Bible among games designers and is always the first book I reccommend to people. While it’s marketted as a feel-good self help type book it really isn’t so don’t let the subtitle fool you.

The book is very easy to read and explains the concept of “Flow” – A state of conciousness where a person loses the concept of self and becomes entirely involved in what they are doing.

The Design of Everyday Things – Donald Norman

Ever wonder why you sometimes try to push a pull door? Or why some TV remotes are easier to use than others? Don is here to explain all of this and more.

All the lessons in this book are easily transferred to Videogames and may change the way you look at the things you use everyday.

How to Lead – Jo Owen

A common mistake new Designers make is thinking that the most important part of being a Designer is “Designing”. It isn’t.

The most improtant part of a being a Designer is being a good Leader. 

Designers are required to interact with everybody else on the team all the time. We are the people who have ideas and are then responsibile for convincing everybody else to follow us in developing them into a reality.

Every Designer has to be a Leader so better make sure you’re a good one.

Writers’s Journey – Christopher Vogler

I choose this version of the classic Heroes Journey because for me it was the easier one to read. It’s stuffed full of modern film references so you don’t need to know anything about mythology.

The Heroes Journey as a concept is important not just for story writing but story telling. Understanding what makes a good story helps you design a game that will give the player good stories of their own whether you’re making a narative heavy adventure game or a hardcore online shooter.

Universal Principles of Design

This is something of a guilty secret of mine. Every so often somebody would trot out a phrase like “Ockhams Razor” or “Hick’s Law” and I didn’t actually know what they meant.

This book includes 100 of the most basic Design Principles and concepts that every Designer should be aware of (but probably isn’t). 

If you want to find ways to improve your documentation then this book is for you.

The Laws of Simplicity – J Maeda

As a Designer you can quickly get caught up in details and end up in a spiral of constantly adding to something.

At only 127 pages the book itself follows it’s own rules and keeps the topic of Simplicity… simple.

If you ever felt overwhelmed by the complexity of your own creations then you can learn to deal with it from this book.

Freakonomics – Levitt & Dubner

Learn to look at the world differently and find the true cause of something rather than the obvious one.

How did Legalising Abortion reduce the Crime Rate? Why is your boss more likely to steal a Bagel than you?

In a time when focus tests and usability studies are more and more common in games it’s important that you learn to look at Statistics from all angles.

Emotional Design – Donald Norman

Back with another great book Emotional Design examines how we relate to things emotionally.

Being able to identify the Visceral, Behavioural and Reflective elements of a Design and understanding the relationship between the box something came in and how people treat that thing can change how you think about your game.

More up to date than Everyday Things this book actually has an entire chapter on Videogames.

Creativity – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Creativity is a fairly nebulous concept. In the game industry you can be an artist without being remotely Creative.

Understanding what Creativity is and how to idenitify and nurture it is the difference between resigning yourself to working on boring licensed crud and celebrating the opportunities an established license gives you to revolutionise a genre.

In a Creative atmosphere with Creative people whatever you do will be Creative.

Hows and Whys of Level Design – Sjoerd De Jong

OK I lied. The tenth book is actually about Game Design.

However I have good reasons. There is very little printed on the art of Level Design and Hourence has managed to distill alot of concepts into a very easy to read PDF.

There is far more to Level Design than alot of people think and I feel that alot of the knowledge of Level Designers has been trivialised in the name of “making shit look cool”.

Level Design does not stop at Sketch-Up.  It is merely the start.