Lots of game designers I know swear by film as reference. Which has lots of merits, not least of which is unifying a team behind an easily communicable vision. But personally, I prefer books for design reference & today I'm gonna share why. A thread:

1) Since games and film are both audio-visual mediums, it's easy to fall into the trap of copying imagery/beats instead of channeling the emotions they invoke. But games are so structurally different, a game that tries to copy a film will always be a lesser product in comparison.

2) Books, on the other hand, force you to envision your own imagery. Before you even begin to translate your reference to a new medium it's already been altered by your brain, making it more likely you'll create a work that feels original.

3a) Books tend to be longer & drier than films. This is good for reference. It avoids what I call the Hollywood Filter: the compression of a subject into its simplest form. Games compress their subjects too, but y'know how compressing an image file multiple times makes it blurry?

3b) ...well, if you take a subject that's been compressed and compress it further, it's gonna come out as the conceptually blurry version of its origins. Which might be fine for more fantastical subjects, but results in a weaker product for anything with a foot in reality.

4) Books are generally less accessible than films, so they are more likely to not have already been mined for ideas by designers past. This is especially true of books that are uniquely about your game's subject matter/setting/etc.

5) Because books are a more active medium, they invite pauses for reflection in a way I find really useful for jamming on design ideas. Ofc you can pause a film to reflect, but I find it easy to get swept up in the story & forget - with books it's built in to the experience.