Does anyone know of a good resource to read on game design? I'm not interested in the programming aspects, but on the psychological mechanics game designers use to make games fun (or, if you're Zynga, addictive).
Required Text
Designing Virtual Worlds. Richard Bartle.
Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Lee Sheldon.
Suggested Reading
Developing Online Games. Mulligan and Petrovsky.
Massively Multiplayer Game Development. Thor Alexander et al.
Synthetic Worlds. Edward Castronova.
Community Building on the Web. Amy Jo Kim
My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. Julian Dibbell
A Theory of Fun. Raph Koster
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.