People occasionally ask me to recommend learning resources for game design or related topics. For my own reference and for yours, here are a bunch of my recommendations, organized by topic!
Books
TITLE
NOTES
TOPIC
A Theory of Fun, by Raph Koster
A succinct and enjoyable intro to the concept of game design.
Game Design
The Art of Game Design: The Book of Lenses, by Jesse Schell
The best overall game design textbook. Shows many ways of thinking about design.
Warning: In one section the author makes outdated and harmful gender essentialist claims about how to design for different demographics.
Game Design
A Pattern Language for Game Design, by Chris Barney
A workbook with exercises to build your own pattern languages. They’ll greatly improve your understanding of your personal design aesthetic and influences.
Game Design
Procedural Generation in Game Design, Edited by Tanya X. Short & Tarn Adams
A varied series of essays each offering different, focused lessons on procedural content generation.
Game Design
The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman
The definitive book on design. Dense, but important. It breaks “design” down into concrete steps and language.
Design
Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud
A deep dive into the concept and function of art mediums. A rich set of lessons on how the medium affects the art.
Art Mediums
101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, by Matthew Frederick
Architecture is one of the few other disciplines that grapples with questions about how people experience spaces. This book offers valuable bite-size lessons.
Architecture
The Timeless Way of Building, by Christopher Alexander
This book introduces the universally applicable concept of a pattern language, an invaluable tool for analyzing and understanding design decisions.
Architecture
Architecture: Form, Space, and Function, by Francis D. K. Ching
This definitive architecture textbook breaks the discipline down into the most fundamental pieces.
Architecture
Ask Iwata, edited by Hobonichi
Biography-in-his-own-words of Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015.
Game History
The Masters of Doom, by David Kushner
Biography of John Romero, John Carmack, and early ID software. Fascinating glimpse into early 90s PC game dev culture.
Game History
Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World, by David Sheff
Book c. 1993 about Nintendo’s history and business. The author had close access to key figures. Time capsule that’ll give you perspective on a very different industry.
A series of succinct, high-quality video lessons on all aspects of game development from Masahiro Sakurai, best known as the director of Kirby and Smash Bros.
Extra Credits is a very long-running series of bitesize, 5-minute videos on a great many game dev topics. Many are outdated or basic, but there’s still plenty of gems in their catalog.