Game Design Books

[teyrnon]

The other day a friend asked me about books on game design. She didn't think there were any but I was certain I had a couple at home. I took a look around and found two books:

The Game Inventor's Guidebook by Brian Tinsman
Game Design Volume 1: Theory and Practice by Nick Schuessler and Steve Jackson

These are both somewhat old. Another one which I've found extremely useful is:

Design Patterns of Successful Role-Playing Games by Whitson John Kirk III

That's only three though so I decided to do some online research and find a few other books on game design that might be useful. I found four that look to be the most promising. They are:

A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman
Game Design Workshop: Designing, Prototyping, and Playtesting Games by Tracy Fullerton, Christopher Swain, and Steven Hoffman
The Toy and Game Inventor's Handbook by Richard Levy, Ronald O. Weingartner

I haven't had oppurtunity to look at any of these yet but intend to look into them when I can. I'll probably post mini-reviews of some sort here when I do.

Comments

bleh.

[(Anonymous)]

i didn't say there weren't ANY, i said i didn't think that bookstore would have any.

but i think i did say there weren't many that were considered 'genre defining'.

koster's work has pretty much been the de facto standard, but he's hardly the end all and be all.

everybody and anyone who wants to be anybody in the mmo niche has taken it upon themselves lately to pontificate as to the holy grail of the standard for virtual world design.

personally, i think they've missed the boat. but that's another big ol' barrel of monkeys i'm not ready to pop the top on just yet.

Re: bleh.

[cybermystic.livejournal.com]

Ah, my mistake. Sorry. You were right that bookstore didn't have anything of worth when it came to game design. Now that I think about it I don't think any of the local bookstores would have anything from the list above.

On another front I should note my interest isn't in MMO but rather in tabletop games and social interactive entertainment. For MMO, I ran across a number of book that seemed specific to online world building with MUDs, MUCKs, and what have you. Judging by the sheer quantity of these books however I strongly suspect Sturgeon's Law will be strongly at play if I ever take a mind to wade through it.

Re: bleh.

[cybermystic.livejournal.com]

I should also note that this is an example of two people speaking at cross purposes to some extent. I misunderstood her position and despite speaking of it a couple times on that day neither of us ever realised we weren't on the same page either. I wonder if this is how many misunderstandings are born. Hmm...