Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From Concept to Playable Game with Unity and C# 1st Edition
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Learn Game Design, Prototyping, and Programming with Today’s Leading Tools: Unity™ and C#
Award-winning game designer and professor Jeremy Gibson has spent the last decade teaching game design and working as an independent game developer. Over the years, his most successful students have always been those who effectively combined game design theory, concrete rapid-prototyping practices, and programming skills.
Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development is the first time that all three of these disciplines have been brought together into a single book. It is a distillation of everything that Gibson has learned teaching hundreds of game designers and developers in his years at the #1 university games program in North America. It fully integrates the disciplines of game design and computer programming and helps you master the crucial practice of iterative prototyping using Unity. As the top game engine for cross-platform game development, Unity allows you to write a game once and deliver it to everything from Windows, OS X, and Linux applications to webpages and all of the most popular mobile platforms.
If you want to develop games, you need strong experience with modern best practices and professional tools. There’s no substitute. There’s no shortcut. But you can get what you need in this book.
COVERAGE INCLUDES
- In-depth tutorials for eight different game prototypes
- Developing new game design concepts
- Moving quickly from design concepts to working digital prototypes
- Improving your designs through rapid iteration
- Playtesting your games and interpreting the feedback that you receive
- Tuning games to get the right “game balance” and “game feel”
- Developing with Unity, today’s best engine for independent game development
- Learning C# the right way
- Using Agile and Scrum to efficiently organize your game design and development process
- Debugging your game code
- Getting into the highly competitive, fast-changing game industry
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Editorial Reviews
Review
Praise for Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development
“Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development combines a solid grounding in evolving game design theory with a wealth of detailed examples of prototypes for digital games. Together these provide an excellent introduction to game design and development that culminates in making working games with Unity. This book will be useful for both introductory courses and as a reference for expert designers. I will be using this book in my game design classes, and it will be among those few to which I often refer.”
–Michael Sellers
Professor of Practice in Game Design, Indiana University, former Creative Director at Rumble Entertainment, and General Manager at Kabam
“Prototyping and play-testing are often the most misunderstood and/or underutilized steps in the game design and development process. Iterative cycles of testing and refining are key to the early stages of making a good game. Novices will often believe that they need to know everything about a language or build every asset of the game before they can really get started. Gibson’s new book prepares readers to go ahead and dive in to the actual design and prototyping process right away; providing the basics of process and technology with excellent “starter kits” for different types of games to jumpstart their entry into the practice.”
–Stephen Jacobs
Associate Director, RIT Center for Media, Art, Games, Interaction, and Creativity (MAGIC) and Professor, School of Interactive Games and Media
“Jeremy Gibson’s Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development deftly combines the necessary philosophical and practical concepts for anyone looking to become a Game Designer. This book will take you on a journey from high-level design theories, through game development concepts and programming foundations in order to make your own playable video games. Jeremy uses his years of experience as a professor to teach the reader how to think with vital game design mindsets so that you can create a game with all the right tools at hand. A must-read for someone who wants to dive right into making their first game and a great refresher for industry veterans.”
–Michelle Pun
Senior Game Designer, Zynga
About the Author
Jeremy Gibson is a lecturer teaching computer game design for the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and is the founder of ExNinja Interactive, LLC. From 2009 to 2013, he was an Assistant Professor teaching game design and protyping for the Interactive Media and Games Division of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, which was the number one game design school in North America throughout his tenure there. Jeremy serves the IndieCade independent game festival as the Chair for Education and Advancement, where he is responsible for the IndieXchange and GameU conference tracks, and he has spoken at the Game Developers Conference every year since 2009.
Jeremy earned a Master of Entertainment Technology degree from Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center in 2007 and a Bachelor of Science degree in Radio, Television, and Film from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999. Jeremy has worked as a programmer and prototyper for companies such as Human Code and frog design, has taught classes for Great Northern Way Campus (in Vancouver, BC), Texas State University, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Austin Community College, and the University of Texas at Austin, and has worked for Walt Disney Imagineering, Maxis, and Electronic Arts/Pogo.com, among others. While in graduate school, his team created the game Skyrates, which won the Silver Gleemax Award at the 2008 Independent Games Festival. Jeremy also apparently has the distinction of being the first person to ever teach game design in Costa Rica.
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Product details
- Publisher : Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (July 11, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 944 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0321933168
- ISBN-13 : 978-0321933164
- Item Weight : 3.15 pounds
- Dimensions : 7 x 1.4 x 8.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #482,118 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #186 in Computer & Video Game Design
- #310 in Game Programming
- #319 in Computer Graphics
- Customer Reviews:
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Also, the author, Jeremy Gibson, is approachable and actually took the time to answer a few email questions that I have had. It is pretty obvious that he lives for gaming and loves teaching about it and being involved with it. Being very passionate about the subject matter, Jeremy's writing comes off as entertaining and is never boring or flat, at least, in my opinion.
The Appendices are also very good and there is a ton of useful information. One must keep in mind that this is an introduction to gaming and C# and is only meant as such. It is a great starting point to get yourself acclimated to the Unity environment, while learning good software techniques and practices in what is probably the best language for Unity--C#.
Thanks for reading my review.
Part 2 introduces C#. If you've programmed before, you can skim most of it. Chapter 18 ("Hello World") is a must-read, though, as it introduces Unity and demonstrates how to create a project and add elements to it. (Not having used Unity before, I was shocked that I could create a particle storm with only two-lines of code.)
Part 3 walks the reader through creating eight games of increasing complexity.
I recommend this book to you if you'd like to learn how to create well designed games using Unity and C#.
Well worth the price.
The thing I really like about this book is the best parts of it aren't the technical parts or the Unity code, since APIs change quickly and become obsolete. The best parts were the process around design and prototyping. These parts are always useful and to more than just beginners. Most people who dabble in game development never finish a project, they start one, and get blocked on it, and go on to the next. The soft skills in this book provide proven frameworks for planning properly, increasing the chance of successfully finishing the project. That said, the book also gives a patient walk through coding fundamentals for new devs.
Unlike other books that foucus only on coding , this book delivers what it promises : it will guide you through the key concepts of what a game is and how to make them engaging and then help you implement several games using Unity.
Great book!!
By the time you are done with the Unity tutorials, you should be a decent programmer and game designer!
Great for beginners and intermediate programmers, and anyone looking to get familiar with Unity.
Having been through programs like Udemy and sought help from other coding guides, Bond's is the first guide I have come across that adequately provides for the new coder. From his breakdown of Ludology, planning techniques, and basic coding primer, to the actual mini-games you create - Bond's presentation brilliantly guides you, introducing concepts in a sensible order, and leaves you feeling confident to proceed into your own projects! I highly recommend this guide to anyone who loves video games, and is interested in using Unity to develop a career in the field!
Thank you, Jeremy!
When i was looking for a book that covered Unity programming (C# that is) i found a few books that seemed like they could very well get the job done. This book is brand new and full of good research. It does not teach you how to program until about page 250. The amount of text on each page is enormous, full of information. Im on chapter 4 already and i feel like before i get to the programming side of this book i will have a better understanding of what i will even be needing to program. There is 8 games that you program near the last part of the book after a thorough intro to C# script in unity. The logic that he programs into the games is broad and clever enough to get you on your feet, and there are many tools and tricks that follow.
In conclusion: This book goes deep into game design and getting your ideas into code.
I have a large library of books covering animation, programming, art, game design.... and this book seems like one i will be happy to finish.
Cheers! 5 out of 5 for how much research is in this book alone Plus how clear he talks in his text.







