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

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!!!!

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

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 Unfortunately most books on the topic were severely out of date, unnecessarily complex or even too expensive to warrant a purchase.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.