Hello there.

There is a review on Gamasutra for the excellent introductory text "Introduction to Game Development"

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130820/book_review_introduction_to_game_.php which I was very keen to purchase.

It is a complete introductory course on the entire field of game development from concept to publication. Unfortunately it is over 11 years old now and long out of print. I was wondering if anybody could suggest a more recent equivalent? Particularly (not necessarily) if available in an eBook format.

Thank you very much.

There is a 2nd edition of that book. 2009, a little better.

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Development-Second-Steve-Rabin/dp/1584506792

I don't know the book, but from reading the topic list, I would say "Introduction" is the keyword there. Each of the topics is wide enough to fill a book shelve on its own. To compress that into a single book means you can't do much more than skimming over the topic. That is great to get a broad overview, but I don't believe it suffices if you really want to take up game development.

A second consideration is the age. While math is all still valid, technology is moving fast. You don't program graphics or AI any more like you did 11 or 7 years ago.

If you can get hold of the book, by all means, read it, but I don't expect it to give you enough information to really start programming and publishing games. You'll need much more in-depth information on each topic.

As an alternative, I'd suggest to check out the FAQs of the various relevant sub-forums at this site. They likely give you good up-to-date resources as a starting point. You will need to make more room for books though, as it won't be a single book :)

Thanks. Its a thousand-page course based on the IGDA curriculum written by industry veterans which is why I was so interested in it. Unfortunately it hasn't been updated for some time so yes, I'd probably be better off looking for a couple of more recent books.

2009 is not that late. Of courses things changed: PBR is now common, so artists will tend to move to a more scientific way to work. Graphic cards can display a bit more triangles, and graphic developer can now use more high-end technologies.

But since that date, the game development should not have changed that much.

In theory, it should be possible for a single book to give you enough to get started, especially if it focuses on one engine or one platform. It was certainly the case when I was buying such books between the mid 90s and the mid 00s. But is anyone publishing such books today?

It's possible that he's looking for the book that will help him to figure that out. I think that such books have probably been replaced by engine tutorial videos at this point. Going through the Unity and UE4 tutorial series (and doing the exercises) should give you the lay of the land from the high-level perspective and then you can look closer at whatever interests you.