Game Development Essentials: Game Interface Design [With CDROM]

This is an excellent book. For those of us one and two-man programming operations as hobbyist programmers, we don't always have the artistic skill or aesthetic intuition to just whip up a GUI. This book explains concepts behind an interface SPECIFICALLY FOR GAMES. THIS is what I found awesome. All the books and articles I've looked up have been for interface design FOR WEBSITES, or stupid, dry, tasteless business-app type programs. This book focuses on game interface design ONLY. It cites examples of interfaces in games you've played most likely, from the ancient consoles and computers of yesteryear (Atari 2600, colecovision, intellivision, commodore 64) to the more modern consoles (PS, Dreamcast, N64, PS2) and cites examples of what makes a good interface and a bad interface. They make some good points too, such as interface design for the disabled. (This cool example they gave was for a healthbar that only changed color. What happens if the player was color blind? If the bar went from green to red, the color blind user would have nothing to gauge his health by; so they reccomended making the bar shorten, and/or change color.) THERE IS NO SOURCE CODE. This book only focuses on concepts and design ideas. Its nice and abstract. It's made to push push push the ideas into your head, even if it is a bit repetitive. Bottom line is, if you're already Joe Game Programmer for a big company, don't buy this book. Have your art department and UI design team make your game interface for you. If you're like me, a hobbyist programmer of a small team with dreams of making it big someday, GRAB THIS BOOK. The more resources you can get, the better. This book doesn't disappoint. Get it. Now.

I found this book to be a great resource for anyone starting out in game design. It covers all the essentials, from the very first console games of the early 1980's to today's complex MMOG's. You're going to think differently about the basic interface elements you take for granted. I also enjoyed the comments from real people in the game industry. Great graphics, too! This is a great buy, whether it's for a class or just your own library.

I had to order this book for a class, but i do love the series anyway. The book is filled with comments and examples from professionals in the game industry as well as opinions from game design students (which aren't actually as informative or helpful at all. After a while you'll probably just skip over those as there are lots of them and they aren't too interesting) There are lots of pictures so you can see the different interfaces games have had over the years, and it's got current information as of today. There are sections about early games, but there are also sections about the "next gen" consoles, 360, ps3, and wii. If you're into interface design, it's a nice book.