Most of you reading this will likely recall Andrea Contato as the author of Through the Moongate, a two-volume book that chronicled the history of Origin Systems and Richard Garriott’s career as a game developer.

The good Mr. Contato is back with another book: Video Games: The People, Games, and Companies — a five-volume work that covers the history and evolution of video games, from their origins in the mid-20th century through to 1999. Video Games will — as was the case with Through the Moongate — focus especially on the developers who brought these games to life: their biographies, their passions, and their experiences. Andrea Contato has evidently put special emphasis on the choices and difficulties that the developers faced during their work, the games they were inspired by, and the later games they influenced.

It should be noted that Video Games has already been published in Italian…the first two volumes, at least, have been available for some time the good Mr. Contato is now working on the third book (which covers the years 1985 to 1989). The Kickstarter campaign that began this morning is to crowdfund translation of the English edition which, if all goes well, will proceed with one volume per year.

As for Through the Moongate, the Andrea Contato did extensive documentary research for each book. In my discussions with him ahead of this crowdfunding effort, he pointed out one chapter in particular as being the one he was most proud of: the chapter devoted to city building/management games, beginning with Sumerian Game and ending with Santa Paravia en Fiumaccio. These are little-known games and, in the case of Sumerian Game, thought lost forever.

But to showcase his research prowess, Mr. Contato got in touch with some of the key developers of Sumerian Game and the heirs of others, found as much information as he could about the game, and reconstructed both the history of the Sumerian Game and the game itself. Thanks to the development efforts of Richard “Pix” Pickles, a playable version of Sumerian Game is available as a reward to certain Kickstarter backers; it comes in a box featuring artwork by none other than Paul Stinson (who did the cover art for Ultima 2, among other games).

You can find out more about each volume of Video Games here, if you’re curious about what each book covers (or will cover, the last two volumes not having been written yet). And you can back the English translation of the first volume on Kickstarter starting today.