"Game Guru: Strategy Games" covers the origins of strategy games, both turn-based (Civilization, X-Com, etc.) and realtime (Ancient Art of War, Dune 2, and beyond). It also discusses the play intent of a strategy game - the balance between the core gameplay factors in this genre: empire-building, resource management, defense, and offense. Later chapters then go on to analyze these factors in more detail. With hundreds of examples and in-depth interviews with the experts, this book reveals the secrets of what makes great games compelling and successful. Professionals and players alike will benefit from the clear analysis of play balance, character and level design, learning curves, risk versus reward, puzzles, scale and scope, catch-up effects, symmetry, and many other aspects of game theory. This book gives readers the insight to enrich their gaming experience.
Dave Morris is a bestselling author - in fact, he was 1990's top-selling author in the UK.
In addition to having written a string of adventure novels and role-playing gamebooks for older kids and young adults, he is also an award-winning videogame designer with two Top Ten hits to his name.
As a mentor in the American Film Institute digital content lab, he has worked with partners like NBC and Microsoft to create new forms of entertainment that fuse the best of traditional storytelling and interactivity. As a scriptwriter he has worked for the BBC, Endemol, Carlton, Pearson and Flextech.
All of these skills of drama, visual storytelling, interactive design and new media come together in his epic 900-page graphic novel saga Mirabilis, part-funded by Random House, which was launched in both digital and print media in early 2011.
