Download or read book Anatomy of Game Design written by Tom Smith and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2024-10-31 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People have played games forever, but it’s only in the past few decades that people really started thinking about what games are, how they work, and how to make them better. Anatomy of Game Design takes some of the most popular and beloved games of all time and dissects them to see what makes them tick. By breaking down the systems and content of each game, the underlying systems of game design are laid bare. Eight games are analyzed – including Settlers of Catan; Centipede; Candy Crush Saga; Papers, Please; Magic: The Gathering; and more – each representing a different genre or era of game design. Each game is discussed in detail, using the same methods for each game. What are the verbs of the game that give the player agency? How do those verbs fit together to form a core loop that makes the game engaging? What are the systems that power the gameplay? What is the larger flow that makes the game interesting over and over again? Each game is then used as an example to tie back to one or more larger topics in game design, such as systems design, randomness, monetization, game theory, and iterative approaches to game development. Key Features: Uses well-known games to provide specific, discrete examples of broader game design theory Discusses eight popular games using the same methodology to allow comparison of different types of games Includes both high-level theory and academic perspective and practical, real-world guidance from a working game designer who has created these games for commercial release Provides clear direction for deeper inquiry into game design or related fields such as psychology, anthropology, game development, or systems thinking

Download or read book Fundamentals of Game Design written by Ernest Adams and published by New Riders. This book was released on 2010-04-07 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Rules of Play written by Katie Salen Tekinbas and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-09-25 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Art of Game Design written by Jesse Schell and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it.

Download or read book Drawing Basics and Video Game Art written by Chris Solarski and published by Watson-Guptill. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book supports my own 30-year crusade to demonstrate that games are an art form that undeniably rivals traditional arts. It gives detailed explanations of game art techniques and their importance, while also highlighting their dependence on artistic aspects of game design and programming.” — John Romero, co-founder of id Software and CEO of Loot Drop, Inc. "Solarski’s methodology here is to show us the artistic techniques that every artist should know, and then he transposes them to the realm of video games to show how they should be used to create a far more artful gaming experience ... if I were an artist planning to do video game work, I’d have a copy of this on my shelf." — Marc Mason, Comics Waiting Room Video games are not a revolution in art history, but an evolution. Whether the medium is paper or canvas—or a computer screen—the artist’s challenge is to make something without depth seem like a window into a living, breathing world. Video game art is no different. Drawing Basics and Video Game Art is first to examine the connections between classical art and video games, enabling developers to create more expressive and varied emotional experiences in games. Artist game designer Chris Solarski gives readers a comprehensive introduction to basic and advanced drawing and design skills—light, value, color, anatomy, concept development—as well as detailed instruction for using these methods to design complex characters, worlds, and gameplay experiences. Artwork by the likes of Michelangelo, Titian, and Rubens are studied alongside AAA games like BioShock, Journey, the Mario series, and Portal 2, to demonstrate perpetual theories of depth, composition, movement, artistic anatomy, and expression. Although Drawing Basics and Video Game Art is primarily a practical reference for artists and designers working in the video games industry, it’s equally accessible for those interested to learn about gaming’s future, and potential as an artistic medium. Also available as an eBook

Download or read book Level Up written by Scott Rogers and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-09-29 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Design and build cutting-edge video games with help from video game expert Scott Rogers! If you want to design and build cutting-edge video games but aren’t sure where to start, then this is the book for you. Written by leading video game expert Scott Rogers, who has designed the hits Pac Man World, Maxim vs. Army of Zin, and SpongeBob Squarepants, this book is full of Rogers's wit and imaginative style that demonstrates everything you need to know about designing great video games. Features an approachable writing style that considers game designers from all levels of expertise and experience Covers the entire video game creation process, including developing marketable ideas, understanding what gamers want, working with player actions, and more Offers techniques for creating non-human characters and using the camera as a character Shares helpful insight on the business of design and how to create design documents So, put your game face on and start creating memorable, creative, and unique video games with this book!

Download or read book Educational Game Design Fundamentals written by George Kalmpourtzis and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we learn through play? Can we really play while learning? Of course! But how?! We all learn and educate others in our own unique ways. Successful educational games adapt to the particular learning needs of their players and facilitate the learning objectives of their designers. Educational Game Design Fundamentals embarks on a journey to explore the necessary aspects to create games that are both fun and help players learn. This book examines the art of educational game design through various perspectives and presents real examples that will help readers make more informed decisions when creating their own games. In this way, readers can have a better idea of how to prepare for and organize the design of their educational games, as well as evaluate their ideas through several prisms, such as feasibility or learning and intrinsic values. Everybody can become education game designers, no matter what their technical, artistic or pedagogic backgrounds. This book refers to educators and designers of all sorts: from kindergarten to lifelong learning, from corporate training to museum curators and from tabletop or video game designers to theme park creators!

Download or read book AI for Game Developers written by David M. Bourg and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2004 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of "Physics for Game Developers," comes a new, non-threatening introduction to the complex subject of game programming.

Download or read book Chris Crawford on Game Design written by Chris Crawford and published by New Riders. This book was released on 2003 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris Crawford on Game Design is all about the foundational skills behind the design and architecture of a game. Without these skills, designers and developers lack the understanding to work with the tools and techniques used in the industry today. Chris Crawford, the most highly sought after expert in this area, brings an intense opinion piece full of personality and flare like no other person in this industry can. He explains the foundational and fundamental concepts needed to get the most out of game development today. An exceptional precursor to the two books soon to be published by New Riders with author Andrew Rollings, this book teaches key lessons; including, what you can learn from the history of game play and historical games, necessity of challenge in game play, applying dimensions of conflict, understanding low and high interactivity designs, watching for the inclusion of creativity, and understanding the importance of storytelling. In addition, Chris brings you the wish list of games he'd like to build and tells you how to do it. Game developers and designers will kill for this information!

Download or read book Designing Games written by Tynan Sylvester and published by "O'Reilly Media, Inc.". This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Players Making Decisions written by Zack Hiwiller and published by New Riders. This book was released on 2015-12-09 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Game designers today are expected to have an arsenal of multi-disciplinary skills at their disposal in the fields of art and design, computer programming, psychology, economics, composition, education, mythology—and the list goes on. How do you distill a vast universe down to a few salient points? Players Making Decisions brings together the wide range of topics that are most often taught in modern game design courses and focuses on the core concepts that will be useful for students for years to come. A common theme to many of these concepts is the art and craft of creating games in which players are engaged by making meaningful decisions. It is the decision to move right or left, to pass versus shoot, or to develop one’s own strategy that makes the game enjoyable to the player. As a game designer, you are never entirely certain of who your audience will be, but you can enter their world and offer a state of focus and concentration on a task that is intrinsically rewarding. This detailed and easy-to-follow guide to game design is for both digital and analog game designers alike and some of its features include: A clear introduction to the discipline of game design, how game development teams work, and the game development process Full details on prototyping and playtesting, from paper prototypes to intellectual property protection issues A detailed discussion of cognitive biases and human decision making as it pertains to games Thorough coverage of key game elements, with practical discussions of game mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics Practical coverage of using simulation tools to decode the magic of game balance A full section on the game design business, and how to create a sustainable lifestyle within it

Download or read book Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design written by Andrew Rollings and published by New Riders. This book was released on 2003 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How often have you heard "anyone can design a game?" While it seems like an easy job, game ideas are cheap and plentiful. Advancing those ideas into games that people want to play is one of the hardest, and most under-appreciated, tasks in the game development cycle. Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design introduces both students and experienced developers to the craft of designing computer and video games for the retail market. The first half of the book is a detailed analysis of the key game design elements: examining game concepts and worlds, storytelling, character and user interface design, core mechanics and balance. The second half discusses each of the major game genres (action, adventure, role-playing, strategy, puzzle, and so on) and identifies the design patterns and unique creative challenges that characterize them. Filled with examples and worksheets, this book takes an accessible, practical approach to creating fun, innovative, and highly playable games.

Download or read book Action Anatomy written by Takashi Iijima and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2005-05-31 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experience real human body structures and movements with this indispensable guide to the the digital expression of anatomical mechanisms. Impressive graphic details, along with clear explanations, explore the character animation of each body part and movement as illustrated for art directors, designers, and animators. Packed with 650 full-color computer-graphic visuals, and covering more than 280 useful topics, with commentaries on every body part, bone, and muscular movement, this comprehensive body-animation graphic manual is a must have for every digital artist and designer!

Download or read book Game Design Secrets written by Wagner James Au and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-09-19 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Design great Facebook, iOS, and Web games and learn from the experts what makes a game a hit! This invaluable resource shows how to put into action the proven design and marketing techniques from the industry's best game designers, who all started on a small scale. The book walks novice and experienced game designers through the step-by-step process of conceptualizing, designing, launching, and managing a winning game on platforms including Facebook, iOS, and the Web. The book is filled with examples that highlight key design features, explain how to market your game, and illustrate how to turn your design into a money-making venture. Provides an overview of the most popular game platforms and shows how to design games for each Contains the basic principles of game design that will help promote growth and potential to generate revenue Includes interviews with top independent game developers who reveal their success secrets Offers an analysis of future trends that can open (or close) opportunities for game designers Game Design Secrets provides aspiring game designers a process for planning, designing, marketing, and ultimately making money from new games.

Download or read book Game Design Foundations written by Roger Pedersen and published by Jones & Bartlett Publishers. This book was released on 2009-06-23 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Game Design Foundations, Second Edition covers how to design the game from the important opening sentence, the "One Pager" document, the Executive Summary and Game Proposal, the Character Document to the Game Design Document. The book describes game genres, where game ideas come from, game research, innovation in gaming, important gaming principles such as game mechanics, game balancing, AI, path finding and game tiers. The basics of programming, level designing, and film scriptwriting are explained by example. Each chapter has exercises to hone in on the newly learned designer skills that will display your work as a game designer and your knowledge in the game industry.

Download or read book Ultimate 3D Game Engine Design and Architecture written by Allen Sherrod and published by Charles River Media. This book was released on 2009 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Video Game Design Foundations written by D. Michael Ploor and published by Goodheart-Wilcox Publisher. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Video Game Design Foundations provides students with a complete understanding of all aspects of video game design. This "turnkey" curriculum guides students from beginning each game build project through completion, integration, and marketing. Simulated design teams learn all aspects of team building required to launch a new video game system"--