This book is ok if you are not serious about game programming. My biggest issue is that you cannot run the programs from the book on another computer. If you want to do that, you have to log on to their web site and pay a lot of money for it. The fact is that I can get a semi-professional IDE from Microsoft's web page for free. This will compile and create EXEs that I can run on any computer. I can also program in C++ which is the language that almost all video games are programmed in. Microsoft's IDE also has an excellent debugger. If you are serious about game programming, or programming in general, I recommend learning and practicing on the real thing.