Game design workshop review

I love game design, and can consider myself at an intermediate level, and it nearly sucked the passion out of me. I consider it cheeky to call this "Hard Fun", since I managed to persevere and read the entire thing. A sense of accomplishment and relief took over, and I can't wait to continue reading Book of Lenses, which I remember having amazingly intuitive design and quite the fun experience. Some of the content is now obsolete, which is completely understandable due it being written a long time ago - but I still took away quite a bit from it - despite how much I just bashed it.

I did read all the interviews - and now have a better understanding of the industry from around when the book was published. I also definitely am more enlightened about the importance of playtesting and prototyping. I'll definitely be a lot more attentive to that from now on. Read at your own risk, and be prepared for a very dense experience.

A solid textbook on game design Fullerton has put together a well-focused and tightly structured textbook that guides readers through all relevant stages of game design. The chapters have a sharp focus, are clearly written, and contain useful exercises and further readings. Arguably one of the strongest elements are the sidebars by industry insiders, which provide reality checks and inspiration. I only had minor gripes, for instance that the digital version of the third edition is missing all cro A solid textbook on game design Fullerton has put together a well-focused and tightly structured textbook that guides readers through all relevant stages of game design.

I only had minor gripes, for instance that the digital version of the third edition is missing all cross references, or that the writing could have been checked better for industry jargon what is it with design folks always 'planning out', 'mapping out', 'building out', etc? What ever happened to simply 'planning', 'mapping', or 'building' something?

But these are negligible caveats in an overall solid publication that I am more than happy to recommend to my own Games Studies students. This is an interesting book. It goes over the basics of Game Design and production, with many exercises that help developing the skills taught on the chapter, and many, many very interesting interviews with people that work on the area. This feels like a Game Design Textbook, and that's not a bad thing. I would recommend it to someone who wants to start learning Game Design, for sure.

Jun 19, Michael Burnam-Fink rated it really liked it Shelves: , academic , games. Game Design Workshop is a pragmatic textbook on how to make games, with a plethora of useful exercises in analysis and design for helping rookies turn their game design dreams into reality. There isn't much in the way of theory here; a brief nod towards Huizinga's magic circle and the flow state, and then the game delves into the meat of prototype, iteration, and improvement.

As a gamer, it's interesting to see the small number of games which people at the top of the field consider their inspira Game Design Workshop is a pragmatic textbook on how to make games, with a plethora of useful exercises in analysis and design for helping rookies turn their game design dreams into reality. As a gamer, it's interesting to see the small number of games which people at the top of the field consider their inspirations ever heard of M.

As a teacher, there are tons of good exercises that could be adapted into homework. Game Design Workshop is deliberately agnostic towards what type of games its reader will make, although there is a slight trend bias towards cardboard prototypes of computer games, a practice followed by many major studios. The advice on using playtesters was particularly good.

Compared to Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses this book is much less theoretical, preferring a lose concept of 'play' to stricter ideas about storytelling, simulation, and balance. I read the second edition, which in is slightly outdated, but I have faith that the 3rd edition is a worthy upgrade. If I were teaching a class on game design, I'd definitely consider this book a central resource. Jan 13, Stacey Mason rated it it was amazing Shelves: research , game-design , gamedev.

Like most people of my generation, I have been playing video games since I can remember. I've read bits and pieces of other game design books, but none have been as clear or as aligned with my own vision of games as this book.

It helped me really make the transition from thinking like a consumer to thinking like a creator. It is indispensable for designers of paper and digital games alike. Fullerton focuses on designing games with the constant goal of vigilantly keeping the player experience at t Like most people of my generation, I have been playing video games since I can remember. Fullerton focuses on designing games with the constant goal of vigilantly keeping the player experience at the center of the design process.

Everything should be prototyped iteratively. The upbeat tone encourages experimentation, failure, and revision, reassuring budding designers that games are not some divine inspiration that happens perfectly the first time around. For someone with little experience, this was exactly what I needed to hear, and Fullerton is sure to repeat the message through examples and anecdotal interviews from some of the biggest names in the field.

Table of Contents. The Structure of Games. Learn More. Raffles' vs. Clifford's Writing Styles Analysis. Gothicism in Poe's and Irving's Short Stories.

Cite this paper Select style. Reference StudyCorgi. Bibliography StudyCorgi. It's our nature as designers to be secretive, so I appreciate all of our willingness to go a little outside the comfort zone here. I also appreciate people being willing to "take the heat" -- this isn't supposed to be a happy-happy process, but I think it's been enjoyable and useful to all who participated! The one major format change we made was going to one week sessions. I think this was a good change, and since we're already booked through March, I think that my one concern, that we'd run out of games too quickly, will prove to be unfounded.

All of the games we've had have been great, and it's been really fun to see the wide variety of games that people are working on. It would be great to see some of these in print someday! I think, though, that some have been more "appropriate" than others for the GDW, and that perhaps we can use these as "lessons" that will guide future submissions.

It's always been my opinion that the games that can benefit the most from this process are games in their early stages of development, with only light playtesting having happened so far, and with a fairly straightforward gameplay. I continue to feel this way. I think that some of the "best" examples of what my personal GDW criteria are were games by, for example, Scurra, hpox, and FastLearner.

And this leads to a new criterion that I hadn't thought of before -- it's worth spending some time making your rulebook understandable! In some cases my own included, I think , failure to adequately communicate the rules of the game necessitated preliminary discussion about how the game was actually played before the analysis could begin. That's fine, but in one week sessions, there simply isn't much time for us to edit each others' grammar. So, let's all do our best work on those rulebooks! I have always felt that "really complex" games would probably be difficult to evaluate in a useful way in the short time period of the workshop, and thus, I'd be interested to hear what Brykovian and IngredientX thought of their sessions.

Their games sounded great, but were very involved, and thus, I for one wasn't able to invest the time in really understanding the gameplay. I think, as a guideline, having a rulebook that goes much beyond 8 pages or so is probably pushing it. On the flip side, what I didn't anticipate is that games like zaiga's or super's, which have fairly simple and clean rules, are also difficult to workshop, because there's not much to comment on.

I'd be very interested to hear comments from those who put up games in the workshop this year. The second part is worth reading for both game designers and producers, especially if you're not working at Maxis or Firaxis or some other place that already embraces iterative design; it gives great practical advice for doing so.

The third part is even more worthless than it would be for a student; you're already a practicing game designer, so the last thing you need to be taught is "what it's like in the game industry". Posted by Ian Schreiber at PM. Labels: Textbook Reviews. No comments:. Newer Post Older Post Home. Subscribe to: Post Comments Atom.