The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

"This book is written by a respected game design practitioner and academic, and it is one of the classics. It is one of the books that many game design education programmes would have students read. It is also very accessible, so I think it is a great way for someone who is curious about game design to learn about the different components involved. What Schell means by a books of lenses is that he doesn’t offer a single approach, he offers a lot of different perspectives to thinking about how to engage with design. “If I am choosing books that will cut to the chase, and get them running on the subject very quickly, this book is one of them.” For example, there are several sections devoted to game mechanics, as well as sections devoted to story, game worlds, and characters. Each has practical information gleaned from Schell’s experience as an educator and game developer. Jesse Schell has a well regarded game company, and he is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the ETC [Entertainment Technology Centre] programme, so he is sitting in both of those worlds. If I am choosing books that will give someone a head start, that will just cut to the chase and get them running on the subject very quickly, this book is one of them. Yes, I work with teams of students. In the last few years, we’ve done a lot of co-located multiplayer games: games that use sensors that track where and how you move to create fun dynamics. I play a producer-designer role, but it takes a team of people to put these kinds of games together – technical skills, artists and such. No, the thing is now we have these tools like Unity , for example, one of the most broadly used tools for game generation. It is free, or at least the student version is free, and you can create a simple game in a day if you want. If you want to make, let’s say, a very simple, html-5 based mobile game, it might take a team of three people three months. You can craft an interesting experimental game in that sort of time. It’s a matter of the scope of your idea and the platform you are trying to build it for, and then how polished you want it to be. If you want it to make it through the app-store, it is going to take more people and more time. Are you familiar with Steam ? Well, in the last few years, aggregator websites have arisen that allow you to purchase and download all sorts of games. Steam is the most well known example, and the games there range from the mainstream to the experimental. But Itch.io is a place to go for really quirky, experimental content. You can find all kinds of things there. Another thing that I would recommend is to check out the winners every year of the IGF [International Games Festival] awards . For example, have you played Papers Please ? That was one of the IGF winners in a couple of different categories. In brief, you are a customs official in a made-up country, and you are given these rules for who to let through and who not, and from this simple premise develop some interesting moral conundrums and decision points. That’s a good example."