This has to be one of the worst programming books I've seen. I've been coding in java for a few years and recently got interested in trying to write some 2D games for fun so I got this book.The book is only useful if you want to know about the authors 2D game framework (which is horrible by the way) otherwise its useless. You won't learn much about 2d graphics in java, how to deal with images best (such as volatile images vs managed images) or anything else that is useful when trying to write a game.Also its beyond me why the example games are so awful....you'd think if you were trying to show off your framework you'd actually make something that was nice..instead of completely hideous.A much better book is "Kill Game Programming in java" by Andrew Davison.