Jennifer deWinter and I co-founded and now co-edit a series on Influential Game Designers for Bloomsbury academic. We first discussed the idea of the series several years ago. When we finally picked it up now about two years ago, we then spent months crafting a proposal and shopping the project to presses. With Bloomsbury, we knew we’d found a good fit for the series. They understood immediately both our insistence on keeping the price point for the books affordable (roughly $20 for a paperback) and our desire for this to be a series of relatively brief books.

Here is a copy of the book in the wilds of a Boston-area Barnes & Noble. Photo by Jennifer deWinter.

The first book in the series, Jennifer’s study of the design work of iconic Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, has just started hitting shelves. We’re especially excited to see it widely distributed through Barnes & Noble (you can hit “pick up in store” at the Barnes & Noble website to find a paper copy near you). We hope that the books in this series will not only help document game designers who have helped shape the field, but inspire the next generation of designers.

New books for the series are currently in development, but we’re also actively soliciting proposals for additional titles. The call is available here.