Customer Reviews

Patterns in Game Design (Game Development Series) (Charles River Media Game Development)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Don't be mislead by the name of this book, it is not "Design Patterns in Games" it is "Patterns in Game Design." Many of the people below have misread the title and have bought it before doing their research.

This is a book on game design, on a method of formal analysis that needs more attention in the game design world. Some people are afraid that if we list all game elements to pick and choose from, we'd end up with stale mass produced games. This is NOT true, please don't be mislead by this thought. Not only does that thought not prevent stale badly made mass produced games to begin with, but like many other structured artistic works (TV, Literature, and the like) games can benefit from a defined lexicon of elements (Patterns in this book). Recognizing the things that games share in common with each other can help you to find what it is that makes a game unique.

Like literature, everything under the sun has pretty much been done already in games. While there are some elements that have yet to be discovered in games, no matter what communication between Designer and Player still requires familiar elements to encourage play and game mastery. Because of this, there will likely be no completely contrary game. A game that is completely different from all other games (I mean shares NO elements in common with any other game), is likely to be a bad one. Just like a movie that shared no elements in common with all other movies would likely be unsuccessful.

Simply because these elements exist and are strictly defined does not require you to follow them strictly, the point is to use the pattern as a starting point to adapt, combine and create using the components given to you, much like programming you can use these abstract tools to create things of great complexity. The elements in the book are described thoroughly and give links to other elements that are related as well as problems and rewards that may arise with using the element. This is essential to understanding that design choices in gaming usually have inherent positives and drawbacks.

In conclusion, this book provides an excellent resource to the abstract art that is Game Design [...]. As someone who has used this method to analyze a particularly difficult to categorize game, I found the experience very rewarding, because I better understood the effect that each pattern gave to the game as a whole. There is one negative however, this book is a little old and new elements need to be added, but it can't go anywhere if the only reviews on it represent a mistake in purchase.

PS. My Game Design teacher at Digipen recommended that a good exercise for Game Designers would be to pick element patterns at random and try to make a good game out of that (remember you can adapt the patterns, they are only a start).

Despite the title, this book isn't a book of game design patterns. Patterns are best practices, designed to solve particular design problems. The "patterns" in this book are nothing of the sort--some of them aren't even positives, but negatives.

However, I still feel that this book deserves 4 stars, since what it *is* is a lexicon. And a very thorough lexicon, at that. So hey, take it for what it is, not what they claim it to be.

This book collects and classifies (arguably) all the commonly-found design elements of games, providing a very useful reference for game designers. For designers interested in in-depth analysis of games and gameplay mechanics, this book provides a reference by which game design elements can be systematically identified.

I have found this useful not only for analysis, but more importantly in serving as a framework for gameplay derivation especially when translating gameplay dynamics from traditional games, play, and popular interactions into the modern mediums of computers, the internet, and online social networks.

This approach was used, for example, in the MILLEE project by CMU professor Matthew Kam, where native traditional games were analyzed using the patterns in this book to help derive language-learning games that were more accessible and attractive to children from impoverished areas of the developing world.

Depending on how you use it, this book can be truly invaluable.

This book is boring for 2 reasons:

1. It is highly academic, thus the text is highly extensive analytical (to a point were non academics say: get to the point man, stop overanalysing it. Lots of definitions of definitions. So heavy stuff.)

2. It is a list of a lot of game patterns that are used in games. Well lists are boring to read. It is allmost as if you are reading a manual or a dictionary or so.

But.....

as a gamedesigner i found the patterns quite useful. It helps you to get new ideas, to screen a game idea and to judge weak spots in your design. And I mean concepts here not graphical game design. Now I have to figure out how I get this book read, it is so extensive. Bit by bit I guess.

www.wouterbaars.net
www.gamesmaken.startpagina.nl

It's always useful to get a framework for game design and a library of patterns in your toolbox. It's the only GD book I consult once in a while for inspiration.

I bought this book in part because I believed it would be the game programming equivalent of the famous Gang of Four "Design Patterns" book. This is nowhere near the case; nowhere in this book is there any mention of how games might actually be structured or organized at the code or object level. Patterns in Game Design is nothing more than a dictionary of features appearing in games.

Examples are "patterns" such as 'Identification' which is basically defined as players identifying with aspects of the game.
Games can have "Alliances" or the potential for "Betrayal" and the authors do not say much more than any common sense person could deduce about such features in a game.

Anyone with even a modicum of experience in the gaming world has no real use for this list of game-possible-features. These possibilities are understood implicitly by anyone who has ever played even a small number of modern computer games.

At best this book might galvanize the imaginations of someone who has no idea what their game should do.

This book misleadingly indicates that there are well documented ways of solving problems in game design. I wasted my money on this book thinking it would provide some insight to the structure and programming patterns used in game programming.

This book does a good job of summing up all that is wrong with the game industry, in that game designers rarely look outside the box and come up with anything that really strays off the path of mainstream.

The original concept of design patterns is to elegantly solve a common problem in programming which is productive to all developers. But for game designers to do the same thing will result in more clones of the same games.

I dont think any comparison should be drawn between Gang Of Four design patterns and what is attempted here.

This book is so bad, that it would been a crime to not warn the buyers to not waste their money like I did.
It is nothing more than an English dictionary of terms used in games... like what means "Avatar".. or what means "High Score List"..