Craddock takes his time introducing each person, and by the time he explains their contribution, I felt like I knew them as human beings, not as developers--what they were like as kids, where they came from, and what their aspirations were. -Venture Beat
Digital Monument Press, or DM Press, exists to document the video-game industry: its culture, its people, and the games that have made an impact in popular culture and our lives.
As the video-game industry continues to grow, an interest in how games are made and the people who make them grows in parallel. In response to that growth, DM Press chronicles the stories of game developers and how they made their creations in the form of eBook biographies. Each book documents a studio's history and accomplishments, and the development of select games, told through a creative narrative wrapped around first-hand accounts provided by the developers who lived the story.
That's the high-level view. The specific ingredients that make up our books are as follows:
Our format's elements come together to form a monument to the individuals, studios, and games that influenced video-game history. That's the idea behind DM Press: "Monumental Games. Monumental Stories."
Side Quests come in several varieties:
- Level 1: Game developers relate how they went from playing games to making games for a living. Readers who aspire to do the same should take these stories to heart.
- Byte-Sized History: Anecdotes from developers and historical overviews of studios, game hardware, and important figures in the games industry.
- Game Design 101: Lessons concerning play testing, storytelling, difficulty, pacing, how visuals and music enhance gameplay, and other areas of game design.
- Behind the Code: A peek behind the curtain to learn technical details such as implementing features in a game's code and creating art for characters and game levels.
- Cutting Room Floor: Game content that was conceptualized or developed, but left unused.
- Reader-Submitted Stories: As an idea, a game belongs to a single person. As a work in progress, it belongs to a team. As a finished product, it belongs to the world. As we prepare our books for publications, we ask online communities to submit their most memorable anecdotes related to games covered in each particular book. "Reader-Submitted Stories," a categorical name that changes in each book to better fit that book's themes, shares those stories.
- Author's Note: An introduction or explanation that provides a frame of reference for the content that follows the note.
Please note that many Side Quests include optional links to websites that provide more information on particular tangential subjects. Some e-reading devices lack the functionality to launch web browsers via links found within books, and may be unable to open these links.
Our books are written to appeal to a broad range of readers. If you're a gamer interested in a story set in the game industry, our books are sure to entertain. If you're an industry veteran curious about the history and approaches to development used by your peers, we guarantee you'll find something to enjoy and learn. And if you're interested in making games for a living, consider our books required reading.
Not necessarily. Some books explore the entire history of a studio and the games it developed and produced. Others cover specific aspects of video game and development culture, or a collection of games of the same genre, or a particular facet of the industry. In essence, we are committed to documenting everything video games, not just the games themselves.
All DM Press books are available as eBooks on Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble platforms and applications.
You don't need an e-reader to read our books. Any of Apple's iDevices, such as the iPad and iPhone, offer iBooks as a free download; and Amazon and Barnes & Noble have developed Kindle and Nook apps, respectively for virtually every phone, tablet, and computer on the market. Just follow the links, download the free app on the platform of your choice, and start reading.
DM Press supports Kindle, iBooks, and Nook, but we're always up for considering new markets and platforms. Write to and let us know which e-readers and e-reading applications you'd like to see us support.
If consumer interest reaches an appropriate level, DM Press will explore expanding into the print market.
Visit the Books section of our website.
Each book receives its own web page filled with links and information pertaining to that book such as news, contests, release dates, promotions, and more. You'll find these pages on the site's main menu under Books.
We do not accept outside submissions at this time.
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© 2013 Digital Monument Press, LLC. All rights reserved.