I'm going to be writing some new stuff on games and game making. However there are some fundamentals that I really want to get out of the way before moving on to serious discussion.
Chip Conley: Measuring What Makes Life Worthwhile
Michael Sandel: The Lost Art of Democratic Debate
Sir Ken Robinson says Schools Kill Creativity
Drive: The Surprising Truth About Human Motivation
The Secret Powers of Time
The Empathic Civilization
The Four Act Structure
Ira Glass on Storytelling
Derek Sivers: How to Start a Movement
Shukla Bose: Teaching One Child at a Time
Flow and Counter-Flow
The Specific Problem of Game Ecology
I've tried to talk about making games several times, but at the end of the day it tends to wind up bogged down in attempts to explain the context in which I'm speaking. These are all designed to create a context, a framework of ideas and philosophies to hold more specific items in place.
At it's core, only work has value. All ideas are individually meaningless. However, their position in your framework modifies the value of your work. Better ideas make a stronger framework for more valuable work. A better communication of that framework, leads to more productive conversation on items within that framework, so hopefully this will help to illustrate the framework that I've built.