Game Design Books

In a recent comment, miwi asked what game design books I would recommend.

All have flaws, but three I think worth reading are:

Game Design, by Bob Bates (long time designer back into the InfoCom days) -- light on theory, but strong on practicality.

Game Design: Theory and Practice, by Richard Rouse -- a little heavier going, but smart and informative.

Game Design Workshop, by Tracy Fullerton -- less focussed than the previous too, but more willing to encourage experimentation.

And three that are not directly about game design, but worth reading for what they are:

Rules of Play, by Salen and Zimmerman; somewhat academic, and heavy going, but a strong introduction to design from a game studies perspective.

Theory of Fun, by Raph Koster; idiosyncratic, but thought-provoking.

Patterns in Game Design, by Bjork and Holopainen -- very dull, and tough sledding, but think of it as a laundry list of a huge number of different game mechanics. As an exercise, it's worth flipping the book over to three different pages, and thinking about how you'd create a game using those three concepts as core.

Your mileage may vary.