A Game Design Vocabulary

A Game Design Vocabulary
Author: Anna Anthropy
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2014-02-20
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0133155218

Master the Principles and Vocabulary of Game Design Why aren’t videogames getting better? Why does it feel like we’re playing the same games, over and over again? Why aren’t games helping us transform our lives, like great music, books, and movies do? The problem is language. We still don’t know how to talk about game design. We can’t share our visions. We forget what works (and doesn’t). We don’t learn from history. It’s too hard to improve. The breakthrough starts here. A Game Design Vocabulary gives us the complete game design framework we desperately need—whether we create games, study them, review them, or build businesses on them. Craft amazing experiences. Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark share foundational principles, examples, and exercises that help you create great player experiences...complement intuition with design discipline...and craft games that succeed brilliantly on every level. Liberate yourself from stale clichés and genres Tell great stories: go way beyond cutscenes and text dumps Control the crucial relationships between game “verbs” and “objects” Wield the full power of development, conflict, climax, and resolution Shape scenes, pacing, and player choices Deepen context via art, animation, music, and sound Help players discover, understand, engage, and “talk back” to you Effectively use resistance and difficulty: the “push and pull” of games Design holistically: integrate visuals, audio, and controls Communicate a design vision everyone can understand

Elements of Game Design

Elements of Game Design
Author: Robert Zubek
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2020-08-18
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0262362872

An introduction to the basic concepts of game design, focusing on techniques used in commercial game production. This textbook by a well-known game designer introduces the basics of game design, covering tools and techniques used by practitioners in commercial game production. It presents a model for analyzing game design in terms of three interconnected levels--mechanics and systems, gameplay, and player experience--and explains how novice game designers can use these three levels as a framework to guide their design process. The text is notable for emphasizing models and vocabulary used in industry practice and focusing on the design of games as dynamic systems of gameplay.

Rules of Play

Rules of Play
Author: Katie Salen Tekinbas
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 680
Release: 2003-09-25
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780262240451

An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

Designing Games

Designing Games
Author: Tynan Sylvester
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2013-01-03
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 144933802X

Ready to give your design skills a real boost? This eye-opening book helps you explore the design structure behind most of todayâ??s hit video games. Youâ??ll learn principles and practices for crafting games that generate emotionally charged experiencesâ??a combination of elegant game mechanics, compelling fiction, and pace that fully immerses players. In clear and approachable prose, design pro Tynan Sylvester also looks at the day-to-day process necessary to keep your project on track, including how to work with a team, and how to avoid creative dead ends. Packed with examples, this book will change your perception of game design. Create game mechanics to trigger a range of emotions and provide a variety of play Explore several options for combining narrative with interactivity Build interactions that let multiplayer gamers get into each otherâ??s heads Motivate players through rewards that align with the rest of the game Establish a metaphor vocabulary to help players learn which design aspects are game mechanics Plan, test, and analyze your design through iteration rather than deciding everything up front Learn how your gameâ??s market positioning will affect your design

Fundamentals of Game Design

Fundamentals of Game Design
Author: Ernest Adams
Publisher: New Riders
Total Pages: 697
Release: 2010-04-07
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 013210475X

To create a great video game, you must start with a solid game design: A well-designed game is easier to build, more entertaining, and has a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace. Here to teach you the essential skills of player-centric game design is one of the industry’s leading authorities, who offers a first-hand look into the process, from initial concept to final tuning. Now in its second edition, this updated classic reference by Ernest Adams offers a complete and practical approach to game design, and includes material on concept development, gameplay design, core mechanics, user interfaces, storytelling, and balancing. In an easy-to-follow approach, Adams analyzes the specific design challenges of all the major game genres and shows you how to apply the principles of game design to each one. You’ll learn how to: Define the challenges and actions at the heart of the gameplay. Write a high-concept document, a treatment, and a full design script. Understand the essentials of user interface design and how to define a game’s look and feel. Design for a variety of input mechanisms, including the Wii controller and multi-touch iPhone. Construct a game’s core mechanics and flow of resources (money, points, ammunition, and more). Develop appealing stories, game characters, and worlds that players will want to visit, including persistent worlds. Work on design problems with engaging end-of-chapter exercises, design worksheets, and case studies. Make your game accessible to broader audiences such as children, adult women, people with disabilities, and casual players. “Ernest Adams provides encyclopedic coverage of process and design issues for every aspect of game design, expressed as practical lessons that can be immediately applied to a design in-progress. He offers the best framework I’ve seen for thinking about the relationships between core mechanics, gameplay, and player—one that I’ve found useful for both teaching and research.” — Michael Mateas, University of California at Santa Cruz, co-creator of Façade

The Game Developer's Dictionary

The Game Developer's Dictionary
Author: Dan Carreker
Publisher: Cengage Learning
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Computer games
ISBN: 9781435460812

The "Game Developer's Dictionary: A Multidisciplinary Lexicon for Professionals and Students" provides an extensive collection of terms and definitions for the game development field. Covering game art, design, programming, production, writing, and sound, terms are categorized by field so that entries can be accessed quickly and easily. Readers will find the dictionary a practical and useful guide to understanding how terms and phrases are used within other disciplines as it is written with the assumption that the readers has no familiarity with any one particular field. The "Game Developer's Dictionary" aims to define game development terms so that someone unfamiliar with the related discipline can understand their general definition. There are currently no other comprehensive game development dictionaries, making this a practical and useful tool with a long shelf life.

Game Programming Patterns

Game Programming Patterns
Author: Robert Nystrom
Publisher: Genever Benning
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2014-11-03
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0990582914

The biggest challenge facing many game programmers is completing their game. Most game projects fizzle out, overwhelmed by the complexity of their own code. Game Programming Patterns tackles that exact problem. Based on years of experience in shipped AAA titles, this book collects proven patterns to untangle and optimize your game, organized as independent recipes so you can pick just the patterns you need. You will learn how to write a robust game loop, how to organize your entities using components, and take advantage of the CPUs cache to improve your performance. You'll dive deep into how scripting engines encode behavior, how quadtrees and other spatial partitions optimize your engine, and how other classic design patterns can be used in games.

Advanced Game Design

Advanced Game Design
Author: Michael Sellers
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Total Pages: 624
Release: 2017-10-30
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0134669452

In Advanced Game Design, pioneering game designer and instructor Michael Sellers situates game design practices in a strong theoretical framework of systems thinking, enabling designers to think more deeply and clearly about their work, so they can produce better, more engaging games for any device or platform. Sellers offers a deep unifying framework in which practical game design best practices and proven systems thinking theory reinforce each other, helping game designers understand what they are trying to accomplish and the best ways to achieve it. Drawing on 20+ years of experience designing games, launching game studios, and teaching game design, Sellers explains: What games are, and how systems thinking can help you think about them more clearly How to systematically promote engagement, interactivity, and fun What you can learn from MDA and other game design frameworks How to create gameplay and core loops How to design the entire player experience, and how to build game mechanics that work together to create that experience How to capture your game’s “big idea” and Unique Selling Proposition How to establish high-level and background design and translate it into detailed design How to build, playtest, and iterate early prototypes How to build your game design career in a field that keeps changing at breakneck speed

Theory of Fun for Game Design

Theory of Fun for Game Design
Author: Raph Koster
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2005
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1932111972

Discusses the essential elements in creating a successful game, how playing games and learning are connected, and what makes a game boring or fun.

The Art of Game Design

The Art of Game Design
Author: Jesse Schell
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 604
Release: 2014-11-06
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 1466598646

Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible. Written by one of the world's top game designers, The Art of Game Design presents 100+ sets of questions, or different lenses, for viewing a game’s design, encompassing diverse fields such as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, puzzle design, and anthropology. This Second Edition of a Game Developer Front Line Award winner: Describes the deepest and most fundamental principles of game design Demonstrates how tactics used in board, card, and athletic games also work in top-quality video games Contains valuable insight from Jesse Schell, the former chair of the International Game Developers Association and award-winning designer of Disney online games The Art of Game Design, Second Edition gives readers useful perspectives on how to make better game designs faster. It provides practical instruction on creating world-class games that will be played again and again.