Recommended Reading for Games Design

So you are interested in game design and you want to know more? What should you read?

The following list is based on my reading in preparing to teach "Computer Game Design" to 16 to 18 year olds in a College in London. I am a life long boardgame, wargame and computer game player. For many years I have created face to face, boardgames, megagames and committee games as an amateur designer.

Boardgames or Video Games - are they really that different?

There is a divide between resources that focus on digital (video) games and those on analog (board) games. There is a lot of similarities between designing games for analog and digital. And there are a few, but important distinctions that seperate them.

Several designers suggest that you should design boardgames first. Their reasons are quite simple:

1. Boardgames are easier create; you can quickly get bogged down programming or learning game engines and get distracted from game design.
2. You can quickly make boardgame prototypes and get play-test feedback.

Costikyan, Greg "Don't Be a Vidiot: What Computer Game Designers Can Learn From Non-Electronic Games"

Game Design in General

Zimmerman, Eric & Tekinbas, Katie Salen  (2004) "Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals"

This is a book recommended to me by a professional boardgame designer and I have seen it recommended in selections of books for Computer Games Design. I have read it and I would also recommend it. If you read one book on games design, make sure it is this one.

It is a daunting size, 670 pages of small type. However, the book has a great saving grace in that it has a detailed summary at the end of each chapter. I read it by looking at the summary first and then flicking back to pick up ideas from the main body of the chapter that I wanted to read more about.

It is also a very thorough book covering all the aspects of games: what is a game, what do players want, what is emergent play, the social side of games, the cultural aspect of games etc. A great primer.

Hunicke, Robin, LeBlanc, Marc, & Zubek, Robert. (2004) "MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research"

I found this to be a very thought provoking read. It summarised the different aspects games design and game players have and how they interact. The idea of the MDA approach now appears in other works on games design.

Games - Social and Cultural

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga

This is a seminal work. It was one of the first books to examine the cultural and social impacts and uses of games. I found it a little too heavy on the literary study side of things, but still an interesting perspective on how games should be taken more seriously than they often are.

Computer Game Design

Lewis,J.P., Mcguire, Morgan, Fox, Pamela. (2007) "Mapping the Mental Space of Game Genres"

I would recommend this as a quick entry into why computer games are different from board games.

It has a very interesting take on what game genres are and the differences between game genres and the experiences gamers want. It also has an excellent diagram breaking down the different roles in the computer games industry.

Schell, Jessie (2005) "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses"

I have only dipped into this book. Each time that I do I come away wanting to read the whole thing. 

It looks at games design from several different perspectives - lenses - each one enabling you to ask yourself how to make your game better. It is a game for established designers to improve their work.

Rogers, Scott. (2014) "Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design Paperback"

This is a book on my order list as it keeps getting honourable mentions from many sources.

Bryant, Robert Denton, & Giglio, Keith (2015) "Slay the Dragon: Writing Great Video Games" 

I read this as a specialist book to teach a course on narratives or story-telling in games. It is written by two experienced designers who write clearly on their subject. They break down story structure in films and why game's story structure is different. They give a very useful aid to writing scenes for computer games that asks three questions about each scene: "What can I do?", "Where am I?" and "Who am I?"

Further, further reading

Costikyan has an archive of articles on games and gaming. Well worth browsing for inspiring and controversial ideas.

Gamasutra
A great website that has game reviews and articles on design and gaming issues. Well worth popping over and browsing.


** Note: I intend to pop back and update this list, as I read more.

Your ruleset via a powerpoint presentation

This is the challenge.

Can you write the rules of a game on a series of powerpoint slides that guide the player through a game's order of play and give them all the relevant rules for each phase?

I have just seen a demonstration of this by a friend. And it blew me away.

Paul was teaching a class of 16 nine-year olds, with the help of one teaching assistant. He wanted to get them to play a game about being an ancient Briton facing the Roman invasion in AD 43. They had not started lessons about this period, and had previously done something about the Ancient Greeks. Paul's game was to give them an exciting introduction into the world of the Ancient Briton, to launch them into learning formally about it.

His solution was to use a powerpoint presentation. The first few slides had pictures of Ancient Britons, a map, giving the tribal names and locations, some pictures and descriptions of their technology, their buildings etc. After this there came a set of slides that introduced the rules. He ran through these slides and played a demonstration turn on a game board in front of all the class. At the end of the presentation he sent them into their groups to their tables with their game boards, clicked a link and went back to the slide giving the rules for the first game phase.

And off they went.

What a great idea. Great for teaching a game to young players. Great for teaching players not willing to read the rule book, and an excellent way to remind the players which phase they were on, what they had to do and what rules applied.

I'm sold on this.

I think this could work for any age group.

I will design a game using this format and report back.