Would anyone happen to know where I can get some educational books about video games from?

Just typed “video gaming history and industry” into Amazon and a number of titles popped up. Shouldn’t be a problem to select a few.

Lol ok thank you.

Before you buy the books check out the library.

None there ha that’s why I asked fluther

It really depends on which aspect of it you want to get into. While there are some books that give overviews of the many things that go into video games, those don’t really give you enough depth to actually do well at it. Designing a game (video or otherwise) is a non-trivial task, but also a crucial one before you can even get into the details like how to code it, the graphical design end of it, or making a decent soundtrack. However, the first (and most important) thing really is making the basic game design; before you can get into the details, you first have to have a good concept.

So, which area do you want to know more about? How to make a world and the rules of the game? Getting your concept into the form of code to make it a video game? How to make the game look good? (Usually the domain of graphical designers rather than game designers.) Or just an overview of the entire shebang without any real depth?

to make a world and the rules of the game & getting my concept into the form of code to make it a video game. The terms as well. I just want to know everything or as much as possible. Or if there’s things you know id like to learn :)

There are very few one-person game developers left in the world today. Modern computer games are extremely labor-intensive when it comes to designing and building models, textures, sounds, tiles, or other assets.
Some notable lone-wolf designers and their blogs:
Jason Rohrer
Markus Persson aka Notch
Kenta Cho

There are probably plenty of others I’m forgetting or don’t know about. I don’t know that any of these will help you learn about making video games.

Here’s some stuff you should probably learn about:
Game theory (mathematics) and group theory
At least one low level, compiled language such as c, c++, Rust or the like
A low-level graphics library like OpenGL

Check out your local community college: they probably have at least one introductory class in game development.

For the basic design, the skills are pretty much the same as being a good author, unless it’s strictly a tactical game or simple board game played on a digital board. And I’m not sure how to learn that sort of creativity.

Taking the world and putting it to rules is somewhere between art and science, though computer games aren’t limited to regular dice the way tabletop games are. While tabletop games are generally limited to various uses for d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, and d100 (or D%, often simulated by using 2d10 and declaring one of them the 10s digit), video games are done on computers, and thus can do complex calculations nearly instantly, like figuring Gaussian distribution. This end of things tends to be a bit math-heavy, so knowing your numbers (especially the probability end of Statistics) helps, but it still takes some holistic creativity to make it work. John Nash has a lot to say that may be helpful on this end.

As @rexacoracofalipitorius can attest, there are plenty of tools you can use to make something in your head into code. In fact, you will probably be forced to use several of them. C++ is still popular, but odds are that a good video game code monkey will be fluent in at least three programming languages, each needed for different aspects of the game design. Getting the mechanical end of things (“Did the attack hit?”) working is different from figuring the motion of a model (“How will it move when it gets hit?”). You will also find that you may have to tweak your concepts a bit to fit around the limitations of your hardware and/or software.

Graphical design is a whole skillset in and of itself, but there is a reason most game designers hire artists rather than do that themselves. Ditto the music, and the sound effects. Suffice it to say, making a video game is generally a team effort as it’s highly unlikely that one person will have the skills to do well in all of those areas.

Now, books can only teach you so much and tend to be rather dry. They also tend to be bad at interactive dialogue; if you have a question, they may not always have the answer, and you won’t be able to ask. For that reason, I think something more practical backed by a community that you can ask specific questions to is probably more educational than any series of books would be.

By that, I mean things like RPG Maker (most notably, their free trial version, in case you just want to dabble) or Shadowrun Returns. Both are prebuilt frameworks that handle much of the mechanical end and simplify the graphical end, while giving a novice designer an idea of what it takes to make a game. SR Returns has “Deadman’s Switch”, a module that is a full-fledged 10-hour game in it’s own right, but the real appeal is the editor, while both have plenty of other content, libraries, “samples”, and forums full of people who can help.

To add a bit to @jerv‘s answer: c++ is fast and good for low-level code like physics engines and the like, but it is widely regarded as a PITA to work with. Any compiled language will give you speed at the expense of developer time, because the linking and compiling steps have to be done for each change / test cycle. Other languages are useful to “glue” together your fast core modules. Lua is a popular choice, and is the basis of the LÖVE 2d game engine. Python also has the popular pygame library, which supports all kinds of great stuff and has a huge community behind it. You can probably learn a lot just from hanging out on the pygame forums.

In addition to RPG Maker and the like, lots of games allow you to customize them in various ways, allowing you to get some practice in making maps and such.
The FLARE project ships a working game with completely open engine and assets. You can “take it apart” to see how it works, add modules, make maps, create character models, the whole bit.
The Cube2 engine provides an in-game map editor. The weird thing is that you can edit the maps during a game, along with other players.
Sandbox Game Maker is an interactive program for creating 3D games. They also have a fairly active forum where you could likely find lots of good information.

All of the above are open-source projects, available for both Windows and Linux. (In fact, they are all available in Debian’s repositories.) In my opinion, Linux is a much better platform for development, especially if you are aiming cross-platform. Linux has a Win32 wrapper API called WINE, and better virtualization support than Windows, again in my opinion.

“Linux has a Win32 wrapper API called WINE, and better virtualization support than Windows, again in my opinion.” I think that is actual fact rather than opinion; Windows isn’t great at cross-platform work.

That does bring up a good point; what platform(s) will you be going after? Coding for a PS4 is nothing like coding for an Xbone, and neither are the same as making a game for us in the PC Gaming Master Race. While the next-gen consoles may be a little more PC-like in terms of hardware, that’s not necessarily a given. Yes, they are allegedly going with a custom AMD-built APU not unlike the A-seried APU used in some PCs, but there’s no telling how the “custom” version will be. It might just be a different OS, or they may be utterly screwball, but in any event, there will be enough differences that you will need to be aware of.

One huge difference in the platforms is the controls available. Most console games use just a controller with a d-pad, 2 analog thumbsticks, and about a dozen buttons. On the other hand, PC gamers may have one of those around for the sort of games that actually work better that way, but we generally have a mouse (much more precise to aim with in a shooter!) and a keyboard with at least 104 keys, possibly more for those that have macro-enabled gaming keyboards.

That leaves multi-platform developers with a tough choice. You could axe a lot of controls, rob PC gamers of options, and basically dumb things down to simplify it enough to use on a console. Or you could make the console versions hard to control due to lack of buttons and imprecise thumbsticks. Or, most likely, you could develop quite different versions of the game.

Of course, part of the reason the “different versions” option is popular is also that PCs have a wider range of hardware and video capabilities than consoles. As it stands, no console has need for graphics better than 1920×1080 while PC gamers may use higher resolutions and/or multiple monitors, so even the graphics make porting a console game to PC a little more challenging.

See I have no ideas what you guys are talking about , lmfao. That’s why I want to be educated it the field of video games.

Well, everybody’s got to start somewhere. ☺

I gave you links. Start there, why don’tya?

Agreed, @rexacoracofalipitorius. And now I’m having flashbacks to playing wit Adventure Construction Kit on the C-64. That sort of software is a great tutorial; it shows you all the things you need to be aware of, and serves as a great starting point for further research.

You can’t get started without a good concept though, and that relies on having a good vision of the game-world you want to create and fleshing it out to be more like a picture than just a sketch. The software we’ve mentioned is just a way to introduce you to that. They take care of much of the mechanical end of things, allowing you to focus more on the basics of game design.

Once you learn the basics, then you can start getting fancy, but start with the basics and work your way up.

Thank you soooooo much guys! I appreciate the help.