Print Screen: Game Design by the Book

Can you find the text for your needs?
7/28/2009 7:36 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

When gamers aren't playing armchair game journalist, they are playing armchair game designer. Given enough time and experience, every gamer thinks that they know how to make a game better, or how the genre-blending masterpiece in their head would revolutionize the industry.

What if you are one of those few gamers that wants to seriously pursue game design? And what if you want to do it without shelling out the bucks for one of those fancy college educations?

Well, ideally you would reconsider that plan. Game design is best understood in a community environment where you can throw ideas around. The big advantage of university game-design programs is that they force you to confront your game ideas head on, and improve them with the input and playtesting of friends and colleagues. But that's not always an option for most people. I took a look at a few popular books on game design to see what they have for the amateur designer.

Raph Koster's "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" is one of the most important books on gaming of the last five years -- but, despite its title, it's less about game design than it is about games themselves. Koster's tiny masterpiece is a defense of games and gaming as integral to humanity.

"A Theory of Fun" will not give you much guidance in actually building a game of your own. That doesn't mean you can ignore this book, which lays the groundwork for understanding what a game is about and what makes one appealing. It's a good first stop for anyone curious about why we game, or why we get bored of some designs. Still, if you are serious about making a game, you will need a textbook.

And textbooks are boring. Even a textbook that is supposed to teach you about fun stuff like games has to organize the material in a specific way, include homework, and give example after example. Games are a fun and interesting exercise for the brain and soul, but every textbook on game design confirms that making them is, in fact, very hard work.

Tracy Fullerton's "Game Design Workshop" bills itself as a "playcentric approach to creating innovative games." Remember those high-school history textbooks that would have pages on semi-important Americans -- a page on Pocahontas, a page on Nathan Bedford Forrest, a page on Wernher von Braun? Fullerton does this with notable videogame designers, giving them a chance to express their thoughts on how games are made. It's a great idea that shows both the depth and diversity of how people approach the industry.

"Game Design Workshop" is written for the classroom almost exclusively. And a certain type of classroom, too. This is for a class about videogame design, full of people who want to become videogame designers. Fullerton is as interested in the process of game development as she is in the theoretical minutiae of what makes a game. How do you deal with executives? What does a publisher do? What are the stages of game development? If you want a text that teaches you both the fundamentals of game design and gives you an insight into the videogame business, "Game Design Workshop" is the one.