44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Game Design: Won't Find It Here, December 1, 1999
This review is from: Game Design: Secrets of the Sages Guide (Brady Games) (Paperback)
To be fair to Mr. Saltzman, he plainly states in his introduction what the reader will and will not learn about designing games in the remaining 474 pages of this massive tomb. The trouble is that normally the reader doesn't read the intro until after he or she has plonked down their $19.95. Quoting now, "This book will not require budding game programmers to be familiar with advanced concepts such as data structures, algorithm analysis, or anything like that. For the most part, the entire book is in easy-to-comprehend language..." Uh-huh. Not only does this book not require you to be familiar with these concepts, it rarely touches on them, and therein lies its biggest shortcoming. For a book entitled Game Design, it doesn't spend much time on the subject.
Quoting again from the same paragraph, "As far as the publisher and I know, this book is unlike any other book ever published." Literally, this is untrue but if we limit the scope of the claim to just books on the computer gaming industry, one is left to wonder why this statement is so, especially in an industry where cookie-cutter designs and slapping Roman numerals on sequels is standard fare. (And very successful fare, I might quickly add.) If there were real money to be made in publishing a book such as this, there would be plenty on the shelves already. I'm willing to let the author off the hook on this one however, because hyperbole aside, this book is rather unique.
Game Design is really a Who's-Who in the computer game industry. In fact, if I were tasked with giving it a title, I'd lean toward calling it Interview with a Game Designer. Quoting from the back cover "Mr. Saltzman interviewed over 100 industry professionals and asked them questions like these: "How did you get into the game industry? What mistakes did you make along the way?..." Now I like to drop names as much as the next guy but c'mon people. It may be somewhat interesting to read how John Romero got his start, but is this information applicable or even useful?
Seems to me, it wasn't all that long ago that PC Gamer magazine gathered the "Game Gods" for a collective picture and pizza session. Saltzman's Game Design gets them together again (or maybe he got them together first) as a source of collective wisdom and inspiration. There's nothing wrong with this; in fact, I have to hand it to Marc. It takes a heck of a lot of time to co-ordinate this number of people. And yet, while the book shows the effort behind the execution, it falls short in delivering the goods. In the end, Game Design winds up being a collection of smarmy platitudes and pat do's and don'ts. Where's the beef, Mr. Saltzman? It's all very entertaining to see so many people respond to the obligatory "What is the secret to your success?" question, but is it meaningful? Any one of the interviewees could have just as easily written "1. Eat right. 2. Get lots of sleep. 3. Exercise... So what's the secret of success? "Be at the right place at the right time." Gosh, lemme write that down.
Quoting from the General Game Design: Action and Strategy Games section, "Considering that good game design is more an art form than a science, it can often be difficult to ask someone to teach it to you." I disagree. Asking someone to teach you game design is easy. Watch this: "Mr. Saltzman, please teach me how to design games." See. Pretty easy wasn't it? Getting them to do it, on the other hand... that's the difficult part as this book clearly demonstrates. After reading almost 500 pages, I'm no closer to being a game designer than I was when the book was still sitting on the shelf and the twenty dollars was still sitting in my pocket.
In an effort to be thorough, Game Design covers a lot of bases, everything from mission design to marketing. But instead of being truly helpful or even insightful as it claims, the book is merely big and heavy. Too much is made of the fact that "over 100 industry professionals" were consulted. It's a case of extreme overkill. I really don't need six people telling me essentially the same thing. Parts of the book are somewhat interesting though it's debatable whether any of it is truly useful. Take for example the section on shareware. I found myself getting interested in the discussion on how best to use shareware as a marketing tool. I read it but I didn't retain it. Even worse, Game Design is not exactly reference material. For example. you're not going to flip through the book looking up what was said about pestering a prospective publisher with a game proposal. (Oh yeah... It says right here on page 364: Don't do it!) And if it's not a reference work, just what is it?
As an industry geek, I know a lot of the contributors and recognize a lot of the names. So for me the most enjoyable part of the book was thinking back to times when so `n so and I were standing in the company break room shooting the breeze about game design. Most readers won't have such memories. Most will buy the book hoping to get a blueprint on making games and will end up being generally disappointed (as I was). Some may walk away feeling closer to the industry for having read the book but it's an illusion. In short, Game Design misses its target audience. It's written for people who want to play games, not make them.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great for the price, August 3, 2000
This review is from: Game Design: Secrets of the Sages Guide (Brady Games) (Paperback)
Imagine interviewing over one hundred people in the game in the game industry, and then taking all those interviews, editing them, and compiling them into a single, coherent volume that flows well. Seems like a daunting task, doesn't it? Well, that's exactly what Marc Saltzman has done here.
Although the book doesn't flow perfectly, Saltzman has done an excellent job of organizing and tying together the advice and insights of some of the top developers in the industry, and it makes for quite an interesting read. The book covers each major area of game development, from programming and design to art and animation to production and marketing. Although the book is certainly not the only book you need to learn to make games (it contains no actual programming information, for example), it's a good general resource that will help you avoid many of the pitfalls others have encountered, and learn from their experience in general.
One complaint I had is that the quality of the advice ranges all over the place, from truly insightful, to stating the obvious, to blatantly wrong. Most of it is good, though, and it's helpful to view each developer's views in light of how well received their games were. My only ohter complaint is that in some sections, most of the developers interviewed seemed to be saying the exact same things, and although that helped to reinforce the point being made, it caused the book to drag a bit.
All-in-all, I don't consider this book a "must have," but I do think it's a good value for the price.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Book Actually Helped Me To Make A Game, February 5, 2000
This review is from: Game Design: Secrets of the Sages Guide (Brady Games) (Paperback)
For me, this book achieved it's goal with flying colors: to help to design, create and FINISH a game. While not a full retail game, it was a total conversion project of an existing game (Starcraft) which needed modification in all areas cvered by this book, with the exception of the "breaking into the industry." I'll say this: the book may not be perfect, but reading it was damn well better than just sitting on my rear end thinking about a project I'd never finish. I feel that this book deserves every star I gave it. With all it's advice and helpful hints, I was able to create a damn good conversion, that actually rivaled the quality of retail games I've played. I found the advice of industry professionals extrordinarily helpful, because it clearly showed the pitfalls I was sure to and did face. I was not looking for another book on how to write code, or draw pretty pictures. I didn't find one. I found a book that very realistically showed what it is like to make a game, and how you should go about doing it. I really thank Mr. Saltzman for writing this very comprehensive manual. It helped me through a massive project, and I am eternally greatful to have read it. By reading it, I learned game design, the entire goal and focus of the book.
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