The Making of Prince of Persia and Karateka books by Jordan Mechner are also very good.

For those of you who haven't read them, Jordan Mechner's "The Making of Prince of Persia" is one of the most engaging things I've read online.

http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/

Just realized there's an e-book now... I'll probably get it.

Similarly, The Making of Prince of Persia is a great read: http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/

Also available as an ebook: http://jordanmechner.com/ebook/

Very interesting to read, but I can't seem to find a "year" when it was written. The Mental Procrastination has a publicised issue date of 1987, but I guess it was written before then?

Both remind me a bit of Jordan Mechner's "The Making of Prince of Persia".

I enjoyed "The Making of Prince of Persia" [1]. It is a journal and thus misses out on some of the dramatic storytelling the strong, contrasting personalities of Romero and Carmack provided Masters of Doom. However, I found it very interesting from a design and programming point of view.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985/dp/...

Recommendations in this area;

Books

'The Making of Karateka' by Jordan Mechner
http://amzn.eu/5iUrxxo

'The Making of Prince of Persia' by Jordan Mechner
http://amzn.eu/fJ0Nfr2

Documentaries

'From Bedrooms to Billions'
http://www.frombedroomstobillions.com/about-the-film
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404567/

'From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years!'
http://www.frombedroomstobillions.com/amiga
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4603210/

Blog Posts

https://arstechnica.com/series/history-of-the-amiga/

Hope ^ these prove interesting, will update comment if I think of others ツ

Nice! You probably know of this link "Get started making music"[0] and I found it pretty cool.

What do you think of "The Sims Game Design Documents"[1]? Could you recommend other similar resources?

I guess what really strikes a chord with me is the arc, not only "in" the game, but of the journey to make the game. One book I enjoyed on an emotional level was "The Making of Prince of Persia"[2] by Jordan Mechner. I also enjoyed "Masters of Doom"[3] by David Kushner, but more on the merit of good research, which I really respect. I don't want a montage, I want the story with the suffering and tribulations.

Do you know of similar content?

[0]: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/

[1]: https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985-19...

[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...

For memo, I just created a file so the list could be augmented at: https://github.com/jhadjar/Notes/blob/master/creation_proces...

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Not sure it's exactly what you're looking for, but I really liked:

- The Making of Prince of Persia - Jordan Mechner
- Masters of Doom - David Kushner.
- Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston (aggregate of stories)

Pretty cool in different ways:

- The first shows how the author documented a good chunk of the process (like solving the problem of the Prince's alter ego).

- The second by the journalistic work the author went through and access he had.

- The third by the context it gives on many things (for example, you get a glimpse on Palantir's current work by looking into Paypal's history and the work Max Levchin, CTO at the time, and his team did on fraud detection, or Hotmail's growth tactics).

    > What is a test movie?
    > An Amazon Studios test movie should be an inexpensive, full-length movie
    > that tells the whole story of the script in a compelling way, with very
    > good acting and sound.

Somehow, I don't think this will work. "Make a movie, to make a movie" doesn't seem like an attractive offer.

I'm not a filmmaker, but from what I understand, it is much more convenient to send out a script than it is to produce and edit a movie, and then send that out. Going by what's presented in Jordan Mechner's "The Making of Prince of Persia" [1], sending out a script sounds very easy, and very common, and it sounds like the people who receive scripts will actually read them to determine if they're good. It sounds like there is a lot of professional feedback.

I don't see how Amazon Studios is going to improve on that, or even match it. Getting feedback from professionals is very different from getting feedback from Youtube junkies.

[1] http://jordanmechner.com/category/prince-of-persia/

It's because the video is an ad for his book, "The Making of Prince of Persia".

Finished reading The Center Holds recently, which was a page-turner despite being pretty aware of the events (spoiler: Obama wins 2012).

There's a section about the Obama campaign's digital strategy which is interesting.

Also read Jordan Mechner's "The Making of Prince of Persia", which is snippets of his diary from working on the game. It's insanely interesting, very sad I couldn't read more from his life (especially the making of Last Express).

It's what you do with what you have and being open to always learning. Reading Masters of Doom and Making of Prince of Persia, I was around (if a few years younger) during this time but I didn't have the drive these people did until much later. If you have the drive, then you can do great things, regardless of the era.

Just this weekend, I read this passage (p.219) in Making Of Prince Of Persia, by Jordan Mechner [1], where his colleague tries to dissuade him from tuition, and rather learning on the job:

Deborah had this to say about NYU: "They say it's a three-year program, but it really takes five years. You can expect to spend $2000 on your first-year film, $10,000 second year, and $20,000 third year. Add that to three years' tuition, and you've spent a hundred thousand dollars. What I would do, if you have the wherewithal - I mean, three years and $100,000 - is spend those three years working for free on every film shoot you can. At the end of it, you'll know how a film gets made; everybody will owe you favors, so you'll have a crew; the equipment rental places and the labs will know you, so they might give you a deal too. Take the $100,000 and make a feature! Then you'll be a filmmaker." She sighed and said: "But no one ever does that. They come around like you're doing, and ask a lot of questions, and I tell them what I just told you, and then they go off and enroll in the program."

1. https://jordanmechner.com/store/the-making-of-prince-of-pers...