Secrets of the Game Business (Game Development Series)

1 Great for the startup developer!
There is a review already on here claiming that the book is poor because he was an industry veteran and the book didn't teach him anything new. I find that rather like picking up a 2nd grade "learn to read" book and claiming that it is not valuable because you already know how to read. Obviously this book is not targeted to industry veterans.

However, the book IS targeted at people who are new to the game development industry and want to know it works from a business, legal and production standpoint. In that role, it performs admirably. The writers are all established voices in the industry and share their insight well. As the president of a small development studio, I have 7 or 8 little flags poking out of the top of my copy for topics that I want to reread or reference once in a while.

I believe that the book will be of help to anyone thinking of starting a new studio right up through their first year of business. As long as you believe that your time is worth money, the price of this book it is worth spending so as to save yourself the time and headache of trying to figure it out on your own.

2 Save your money
I wouldn't say there are any secrets in this book. I'm an experienced product and marketing manager in the high tech industry. There was some interesting information that pertained to licensing terms and some breakouts of budgets, that was it.

Definitely not worth $32. Maybe half the price.

3 Excellent Collection
Reviewing a collection of essays isn't easy, because they are by definition a hodgepodge of widely-varying subjects, similar to a restaurant reviewer who's charged with reviewing a buffet. A buffet that is mostly excellent could get an overall mediocre rating if there's a really frightening tub of vegetable mush that wrecks the whole experience, and a review of a mostly mediocre buffet could scare people away from a truly excellent entrŽe hiding in there. The only buffets that are easy to review are the ones that are 100% good or 100% bad, and those are a rare thing.

Thankfully, the editor Francois Dominic Laramee has made my job easy by editing together a uniformly excellent collection of essays on the game business. The essays are all well-written, and Mr. Laramee has done a terrific job of editing them together into a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts (along with contributing four essays himself). The authors represent a good cross-section of independent developers and game company executives, all of whom appear to be quite willing to impart their own business wisdom to the reader.

One thing I liked right away was that the material is all presented in concrete terms and not some nebulous motivational-speaker gibberish. The authors, on the whole, are more than happy to provide real numbers and case-studies to back up their claims. The subjects covered are wide-ranging, going from do's and don'ts of dealing with publishers, putting together a business model and business plan, managing a project that won't get cancelled, and specific "wrap up" topics like managing customer-support in MMORPG games.

Another pleasant surprise (likely due to Laramee's Quebecer heritage) is that the essays are not USA-centric, as you see in most books about business. While there are certainly plenty of case-studies of US companies, there are also some essays about the game industry in Europe and how to deal with offshore contractors.

_Secrets of the Game Business_ should be required reading for anyone with plans to become an independent game developer. While it's far from a complete guide on how to get into the business, lacking things like the legal minutiae of obtaining copyrights and trademarks and making work-for-hire agreements, this book is a terrific overview of how to build a product, work with a publisher/producer, and get your product on the shelf. Happy reading!

4 Excellent for understanding the publisher better!
I've acquired a few books about game development and the game business, yet this is the first one that truly gave me the information I had wondered about for some time now. Many questions regarding royalty rates, the process of going from a game in its gold copy all the way to the retailer's shelves, and more are explained here.

This book helps to clear up any misconceptions that developers often have about the publisher, as well as keep future and startup development teams primed and with a good guideline of what to expect.

Definitely worth having in your collection, especially if you're a new developer like myself, or are intending to get involved with the game industry.