Games Design And Play Review

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· 38 ratings · 4 reviews

Start your review of Games, Design and Play: A Detailed Approach to Iterative Game Design

Jan 22, 2021 ashleigh rated it it was amazing

i'll he making a board game (it seemed like a good idea at the time lmfao) for my capstone and this was a really good breakdown of the process esp for beginners

Feb 03, 2018 Reido rated it it was amazing

A great formalised view on how to create games. Taking an iterative process of going from conception to production. The intriguing factor of the book was seeing both the authors love of systems being employed throughout the book. The architecture in how to create and step forward is simplified and structured in such a way; where it makes it seamless to understanding where one is within the process, and how to go about it next. If your looking about a book about visual aesthetics, and software yo A great formalised view on how to create games. Taking an iterative process of going from conception to production. The intriguing factor of the book was seeing both the authors love of systems being employed throughout the book. The architecture in how to create and step forward is simplified and structured in such a way; where it makes it seamless to understanding where one is within the process, and how to go about it next. If your looking about a book about visual aesthetics, and software your getting the wrong book. This book is a formalized way in how to create an idea, mitigate your mistakes quickly through processes, and then modeling it through affordances one may have. A great read. ...more

There's not much new in here which hasn't been already covered by either 'The Art of Game Design' by Jesse Schell or 'Game Design Workshop' by Tracy Fullerton. The author positions the book as 'not another Game Design book', yet the book rehashes most of the concepts taught in the aforementioned books in his own way, without a clear structure or consistency to the theoretical framework. There is next to no reasoning given why the author thinks his own framework needs to deviate from the commonly There's not much new in here which hasn't been already covered by either 'The Art of Game Design' by Jesse Schell or 'Game Design Workshop' by Tracy Fullerton. The author positions the book as 'not another Game Design book', yet the book rehashes most of the concepts taught in the aforementioned books in his own way, without a clear structure or consistency to the theoretical framework. There is next to no reasoning given why the author thinks his own framework needs to deviate from the commonly known structural elements, despite those elements being repeated and built upon in the later chapters.

I can't really recommend this book. There is some valuable insights though, namely some theory on iteration in game design, which make up roughly 50 pages, which I consider the core of the book (as indicated by its subtitle). Unfortunately it is not enough to make up for the rest of it, which is a shame, since every designer iterates differently and no book I know really covers a comprehensive overview over the different techniques applied. As mentioned by the authors, prototyping alone could fill a whole book. Why not fill a whole book with all the different ideation, prototyping, playtesting and evaluation techniques. I'm sure a lot of novel designers have a lot of question marks in their head, which this book unfortunately doesn't answer to a sufficient extent.

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