Customer Reviews

Game Design: Principles, Practice, and Techniques - The Ultimate Guide for the Aspiring Game Designer

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Recently I started to entertain the idea for a game prototype I had in mind, since I was a bit green on the process I wanted to find a book that will cover the basics and make it all crystal clear for me. Unfortunately most books on the topic were severely out of date, unnecessarily complex or even too expensive to warrant a purchase. That's when I found Game Design: Principles, Practice, and Techniques and being recently published, it was an added bonus. This book not only takes the reader through the entire process of the production cycle, but it keeps everything light and entertaining with just the right balance of type and a wealth of colored illustrated pages, just the way I like it. And with illustrations on practically every page, it wasn't hard for a visual guy like me to read the book from cover to cover. (Why are there no programming books like this is beyond me)

Jim Thompson, Barnaby Berbank-Green, and Nic Cusworth keeps the book extremely consistent between the three of them, so well in fact that you won't realize when another author took over.

The book is broken up into 3 chapters; the first begins with a brief history in video games and takes you through the genres, styles and popular game mechanics used today, which are broken up with practical case studies.
The second chapter then moves unto elaborating on what you previously learnt and applying it to the real world. Everything from creating a game design document to gathering inspiration for concept art, level design and actually taking you through the process of creating a low poly solider from concept to completion. However keep in mind most of the topics are just the fundamentals to get you going, and rarely spans more than two pages since there's so much to cover, but it's all well written and flows like a gentle summer breeze. The third chapter then takes you through the pitching process, prototyping and a discussion on industry standard tools.

All in all it was a great book to read and money well spent, I've learnt quite a bit, and the only topics I wished they covered more was some programming and asset management, but as it stands the book still makes a great reference and resource.

Would I recommend it? Absolutely! Especially if you're a bit fuzzy on the process of taking a game from idea to prototype and beyond. Here's hoping for a 2nd edition expanding into more advanced discussions.

I had to get this book for a college course, and read it over a weekend. There's not really any insightful information in the book; if you're a gamer in any sense of the word you should be familiar with 80% of the material, and the other 20% can be learned through a small amount of Googling. The book goes over many different aspects of the game design industry, but because of that it never focuses on one specifically and suffers by being too shallow in everything. If you want to get into the industry, the best advice is to pick up a specialized book (if you're an artist, get something on Blender or Photoshop; programmer, pick a language (C/C++, Lua, Python) and find a book for that) and just dive in.

This is a good book to give Grandma if you want her to know kind of what you do for a living or what you're studying, but otherwise it's not very useful for someone interested in getting into game design.

If you like to read about the history of gaming or trying to understand your kids lingo then this is a great book. but if you have to pick up this book for a class and you been playing games since the 80's then you need to save your money.

Bought this book for a class I was taking. Good read, really good examples to back up the text. Very relevant materials.

Purchased the book for my son's college course. The price was much cheaper than anywhere else. We needed the book quickly because the school did not tell him he needed it until the day before class started. The book arrived well packaged and my son had plenty of time to do the required reading and work before it was due! Thanks!

My title pretty much sums it up. While this was an interesting book, all it did was define the different game types and give very brief descriptions about character, level, and model design. Again fun to read, but nothing I could not have found on the internet.

I bought this book for a game development class and I love it. Its small, compact and so informative. I would recomend this book to anyone who wants to get the hands-on insight to the gaming industry. Love this book, awesome, go get it!!!!

I ordered this book online, mistake #1. If I had opened the book before I acquired it, I never would have purchased it. If you don't know what a 3rd person shooter or an action adventure game is, this book is not going to be able to help you make one. This seems more like a summer reading requirement for a freshmen game production course then something to be used as a reference in production. If you don't know the stuff in the book, look up the subject for each chapter in Google or Wikipedia, you will save some cash and probably learn more then is presented in the book.

Grade:F

A book required for a course in college, yet I can't remember using the damn thing.