Tabletop Game Design For Video Game Designers

Learn the mechanics that take your game from an idea to a playable product. Do you aspire to be a game designer but aren’t sure where to begin? Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers guides you through your initial attempts to design game mechanics. It goes beyond simple description and definition to explore in detail the issues that designers grapple with for every game they create. Learning to design tabletop games builds a solid foundation for game designers and provides methods that can be applied towards creating paper prototypes of computer-targeted games. Presented in a step-by-step format, Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers helps the reader understand how the game design skills that are acquired through creating tabletop games can be used when designing video games. Fully playable games accompany every topic so you can truly understand and experience each component that goes into game creation. Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers includes: Simple, highly focused games that can be played, analyzed, improved, and/or modified in conjunction with a particular topic in the book. Integrated game design exercises, chapter learning objectives, and in-text sidebars to provide further examples to apply directly to your game creation process. A companion website (www.funmines.com) which includes: "print & play" tabletop games, links to online games, game design resources, and articles about designing and developing games.

Many aspiring game designers have crippling misconceptions about the process involved in creating a game from scratch, believing a "big idea" is all that is needed to get started. But game design requires action as well as thought, and proper training and practice to do so skillfully. In this indispensible guide, a published commercial game designer and longtime teacher offers practical instruction in the art of video and tabletop game design. The topics explored include the varying types of games, vital preliminaries of making a game, the nuts and bolts of devising a game, creating a prototype, testing, designing levels, technical aspects, and assessing nature of the audience. With practice challenges, a list of resources for further exploration, and a glossary of industry terms, this manual is essential for the nascent game designer and offers food for thought for even the most experienced professional.

Learn the mechanics that take your game from an idea to a playable product. Do you aspire to be a game designer but aren’t sure where to begin? Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers guides you through your initial attempts to design game mechanics. It goes beyond simple description and definition to explore in detail the issues that designers grapple with for every game they create. Learning to design tabletop games builds a solid foundation for game designers and provides methods that can be applied towards creating paper prototypes of computer-targeted games. Presented in a step-by-step format, Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers helps the reader understand how the game design skills that are acquired through creating tabletop games can be used when designing video games. Fully playable games accompany every topic so you can truly understand and experience each component that goes into game creation. Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers includes: Simple, highly focused games that can be played, analyzed, improved, and/or modified in conjunction with a particular topic in the book. Integrated game design exercises, chapter learning objectives, and in-text sidebars to provide further examples to apply directly to your game creation process. A companion website (www.funmines.com) which includes: "print & play" tabletop games, links to online games, game design resources, and articles about designing and developing games.

Create the Digital Games You Love to Play Discover an exercise-driven, non-technical approach to game design without the need for programming or artistic expertise using Game Design Workshop, Third Edition. Author Tracy Fullerton demystifies the creative process with a clear and accessible analysis of the formal and dramatic systems of game design. Examples of popular games, illustrations of design techniques, and refined exercises strengthen your understanding of how game systems function and give you the skills and tools necessary to create a compelling and engaging game. The book puts you to work prototyping, playtesting, and revising your own games with time-tested methods and tools. It provides you with the foundation to advance your career in any facet of the game industry, including design, producing, programming, and visual design.

Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it.

In this volume, people of diverse backgrounds talk about tabletop games, game culture, and the intersection of games with learning, theater, and other forms. Some have chosen to write about their design process, others about games they admire, others about the culture of tabletop games and their fans. The results are various and individual, but all cast some light on what is a multivarious and fascinating set of game styles.

Welcome to a book written to challenge you, improve your brainstorming abilities, and sharpen your game design skills! Challenges for Game Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers is filled with enjoyable, interesting, and challenging exercises to help you become a better video game designer, whether you are a professional or aspire to be. Each chapter covers a different topic important to game designers, and was taken from actual industry experience. After a brief overview of the topic, there are five challenges that each take less than two hours and allow you to apply the material, explore the topic, and expand your knowledge in that area. Each chapter also includes 10 "non-digital shorts" to further hone your skills. None of the challenges in the book require any programming or a computer, but many of the topics feature challenges that can be made into fully functioning games. The book is useful for professional designers, aspiring designers, and instructors who teach game design courses, and the challenges are great for both practice and homework assignments. The book can be worked through chapter by chapter, or you can skip around and do only the challenges that interest you. As with anything else, making great games takes practice and Challenges for Game Designers provides you with a collection of fun, thoughtprovoking, and of course, challenging activities that will help you hone vital skills and become the best game designer you can be.

The Art of Game Design guides you through the design process step-by-step, helping you to develop new and innovative games that will be played again and again. It explains the fundamental principles of game design and demonstrates how tactics used in classic board, card and athletic games also work in top-quality video games. Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible, and award-winning author Jesse Schell presents over 100 sets of questions to ask yourself as you build, play and change your game until you finalise your design. This latest third edition includes examples from new VR and AR platforms as well as from modern games such as Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us, Free to Play games, hybrid games, transformational games, and more. Whatever your role in video game development an understanding of the principles of game design will make you better at what you do. For over 10 years this book has provided inspiration and guidance to budding and experienced game designers - helping to make better games faster.