
Rules of Play - gekkostate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_Play
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angarg12
I read this book a few years back when I was interested in making games as a
hobby.

I think it's a good one-stop source for game design. If you had to read one
single book on game design, it should be this one, as it covers many topics
far and wide. I particularly love the blend of academic focus and
industry/professional experience that the authors instil into it.

On the other hand, the book is overly verbose and sometimes beats around the
bush before making a point.

Finally the Commissioned games chapters are fantastic. The authors ask a
professional game designer to create a game based on a set of restrictions,
and then these write up the process that they went through.

For completeness I include a 1 sentence review of other game design books:

A Theory of Fun for Game Design: It probably won't blow away your world, but
it is such a quick and fun book that you might as well give it a go.

Challenges for Games Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game
Designers: The premise is simple, each chapter briefly explains a game design
concept, and then offers a set of design challenges that the reader has to go
through. I love the conciseness of each chapter, opposed to the verbosity of
Rules of Play. Be warned though, if you don’t do the design challenges in the
book, you are missing over 90% of the point.

Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design: This book is much more applied
and specific that, say, Rules of Play. It gives concrete and actionable advise
on specific design challenges. On the other hand some is lost with such a
narrow focus. For instance, much of the advise is oriented towards very
specific genres of games.

The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses: On this book Jesse Schell analyses
game design from a different ‘lens’ on each chapter. The book contains a blend
of theoretical analysis and practical experience. Maybe it’s biggest weakness
is that it is still limited by the experiences of a single author. Overall a
very round and well balanced book.

Game Design Workshop: Having read the other books I didn’t feel this one
brings anything particular to the table. It is another all-in-one book whose
content is covered to some extent by any other of the previous books. The
Designer perspective sections on each chapter are quite interesting.

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telesilla
I've been seeking exactly one of these concepts to understand how people can
interact with a limited system and yet still find it engaging: _lusory
attitude_ from Suit's 1978 book "The grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia".
Thanks!

[https://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Grasshopper.html?id=...](https://books.google.nl/books/about/The_Grasshopper.html?id=G9z4wjVB_0wC)

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MRD85
Does anyone have any insight into if there are some good tips to be pulled
from game design into the more broad category of design? I'm a CS student, and
while I don't have any interest in becoming a game developer, I have an
interest in design in general. I'm currently attempting to adopt a more user-
centric model of how I perceive development and I imagine there is some
overlap between game design and other design.

~~~
killjoywashere
>Does anyone have any insight into if there are some good tips to be pulled
from game design into the more broad category of design? ... while I don't
have any interest in becoming a game developer, I have an interest in design
in general.

I recommend you learn the particulars of a specific sort of design first.
Games would be a good starting point.

In general, learning something in general means you've learned _a lot_ of the
particulars. If you want to study X, the really hard bits of X, the
interesting bits of X, you need other people to bring them to you. They need
to know "you're the guy" to turn to when they have a problem in the field of
X. In order to do that, you need to establish yourself as particularly skilled
in _some_ aspect of X, and preferably more than one aspect of X.

Let's take another particular, my specialty, pathology. I have a colleague who
is _really_ interested in skin diseases. She will never see all the skin
diseases herself in her regular, 2000 cases/year practice. No one will. Some
of these diseases are 1 in a million. The numbers aren't going to work out.

But she read all the books and she established a reputation within her
department as being really interested in skin. So other pathologists brought
her their interesting skin cases and their hard skin cases. Then she did a
fellowship in dermatopathology. And then even more people sent her cases,
people she met in training, at conferences, got her name in an article,
whatever. FedEx overnight, "Dear Dr. Y, this 27 year old man is in our ICU,
his immune system appears to be destroying all the skin around his new red
tattoo, down to muscle. We obtained this biopsy. What do you think it is?"

Eventually, she'll get enough cases to write her own book on immune diseases
of the skin. And maybe, maybe, if she's really good, and works for a very long
time, and really likes writing, she'll write her own general textbook of
dermatopathology.

To write her own general textbook of pathology, well, that happens once in a
generation.

To write a widely accepted textbook of pathology that all physicians will
read, well, that's essentially unheard of. The greatest minds in each subfield
collaborate to write that book and struggle to get an update out every 3-5
years.

A field so broad as design ... my goodness, to be the recognized general
expert in such a vsat field, it would seem to me, verges on impossible. Surely
you will need to focus on something....

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MRD85
I'm still a CS student so I'm not quite yet ready to specialise. Late last
year I went through the Gang of Four book on design patterns in software
development. The patterns described in this text are widely applicable to
most/all forms of software development. Reading this book was making me
immediately see where I'd previously struggled and that there was already
elegant solutions.

My question, in regard to game design, is what principles from this field
could be widely adopted, or adapted in other subfields?

~~~
jacobush
You have now a knowledge of a range of tools. What takes a long time, in any
craft, is to know the canonical way to use each tool. Then, after an even
longer time, you come to know when to use tools in surprising ways.

It just takes time, for all of us. Some are faster, but I bet for these people
it still feels like a long time, just because they are sooo smart and see even
more possibilities.

