I’ve noticed that Amazon is having a textbook sale for Winter 2007. What caught my attention is that some schools teach game design, and that makes books they use be marked as textbooks. Some have made their way into the sale list. Score!

Our semi-annual sale on textbooks has been expanded! For a limited time, you can now save up to 30% on over 100,000 new textbooks, leaving more money in your pocket for basic necessities. Pizza, anyone?

Although at least 10 Universities and game development schools are adding console game development with XNA Game Studio Express into their curricula, XNA books were, unfortunatly, not available. Reason, of course, being is that the first books are yet to come out. That’s ok, I can wait.

XNA framework takes care of the hardware, loaders, etc. Engines build on top of XNA cover physics, effects, heavy math, and assist with content generation. Complicated game development projects are now being simplified down to coming up with an idea, and logically expressing that idea – the rest is hidden in abstract. But topics such as algorithms, artificial intelligence, and game story and character development are platform independent and are becoming exceptionally essential to making innovative games.

If, for some reason, anyone manages to pick up $150 worth of books (getting an actual textbook perhaps? Even on sale they are crazy expensive) there’s an extra $15 off with TBWINTO7 promotional code.

I think I’ll take this opportunity to read about concepts I’m lacking, and improve my game programming skills.

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