Synopses & Reviews
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
5+ Hours of Video Instruction
Overview
Introduction to Game Design LiveLessons introduces you to a play-based approach to game design through the creation of a video game from start to finish. Along the way, the lessons identify the primary characteristics of games and different strategies for creating them as well as the iterative game design process of conceptualizing, prototyping, playtesting and evaluating.
Description
This is a comprehensive overview of the game design process from start to finish. By following along, viewers learn the steps involved in coming up with a solid idea for a game, building different types of prototypes, methods for playtesting game prototypes and evaluating the results. The goal of this Livelessons video is to provide viewers with all the tools needed to create innovative and exciting new games. Along the way, Macklin and Sharp cover a wide range of game genres and types as examples of a play-centric approach to making games and delve into the reasons why they are successful.
Skill Level
- All Levels
- Beginner
- Intermediate
- Advanced
What You Will Learn
- The game design process in detail
- Techniques for creating innovative games
- The tools designers use to create a wide range of play experiences
- How to break down the elements of a game
Who Should Take This Course
- Those interested in learning how to design games, and those with experience looking for a new approach to thinking about games.
Course Requirements
About LiveLessons Video Training
The LiveLessons Video Training series publishes hundreds of hands-on, expert-led video tutorials covering a wide selection of technology topics designed to teach you the skills you need to succeed. This professional and personal technology video series features world-leading author instructors published by your trusted technology brands: Addison-Wesley, Cisco Press, IBM Press, Pearson IT Certification, Prentice Hall, Sams, and Que. Topics include: IT Certification, Programming, Web Development, Mobile Development, Home and Office Technologies, Business and Management, and more. View all LiveLessons on InformIT at: http://www.informit.com/livelessons
0134176707 / 9780134176703 Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development (Book) and Introduction to Game Design LiveLessons (VideoTraining) Bundle
Package consists of:
0134171861 / 9780134171869 Introduction to Game Design LiveLessons Access Code Card
0321933168 / 9780321933164 Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From Concept to Playable Game with Unity and C#
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
Synopsis
Learn Game Design, Prototyping, and Programming with Today's Leading Tools: Unity(TM) 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
Synopsis
Game development and design are among today's fastest-growing technical fields, now supported by programs in hundreds of colleges and universities. Today's #1 game development platform and engine is Unity, and C# is the most powerful language available for writing Unity applications. Now, one hands-on guide covers both game development and design, and both Unity and C#.
Written by an instructor who helped pioneer America's #1 university game development program at USC, this guide illuminates the basic tenets of game design and presents a detailed, project-based introduction to game prototyping and development, using both paper and the Unity game engine.
Jeremy Gibson presents prototyping as a core game design skill (much as sketching is a core artist's skill), taking a straightforward, commonsense approach that has been refined over many years of teaching beginners. Throughout, you're encouraged to experiment on your own, and to discover that most problems have multiple solutions.
Gibson first introduces general game design concepts, including game mechanics, design approaches, methodologies for analyzing games, and the math and probabilistic foundations of many games. Next, he explores basic programming concepts that are nearly identical across most modern languages (e.g., variables, functions, classes, arrays, loops, and conditionals.
Then, in the heart of the book, Gibson presents eight hands-on game prototyping tutorials, each delving into specific prototyping and programming skills. These modular tutorials cover games ranging from block puzzles to first-person shooters, 2D platformer to physics puzzles. Each tutorial chapter ends with optional exercises that encourage you to enhance the games you've already constructed, and learn more skills for launching your own original projects.
To support new developers, Gibson also presents a simple C# reference that makes this language far easier to learn and use -- whether you're writing games or anything else.
Synopsis
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
About the Author
About the Instructors
Colleen Macklin is a game designer and an Associate Professor in the school of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design, where she has been teaching interaction and game design for over 20 years. Macklin is also founder and co-director of PETLab (Prototyping Education and Technology Lab), a lab that develops games for experimental learning and social engagement. PETLab projects include disaster preparedness games and sports with the Red Cross, the urban activist game Re:Activism and the physical/fiscal sport Budgetball. PETLab has also published game design curricula for the Boys & Girls Club. She is a member of the game design collective Local No. 12, best known for their social card game, the Metagame. Her work has been shown at Come Out and Play, UCLA ArtSci Center, The Whitney Museum for American Art and Creative Time.
John Sharp is a designer, art historian, curator and educator with over twenty five years of involvement in the creation and study of art and design. He is the Associate Professor of Games and Learning at Parsons The New School for Design. Along with Colleen Macklin, John co-directs PETLab (Prototyping, Education and Technology Lab), a research group focused on games and their design as a form of social discourse. John is also a member of the game design collective Local No. 12 along with Colleen Macklin and Eric Zimmerman (Arts Professor, New York University Game Center), a company focused on finding play in cultural practices. Along with Peter Berry, John is a partner in Supercosm, where he focuses on interaction and game design for arts and education clients.
Table of Contents
Preface xxiv
Part I Game Design and Paper Prototyping 1
1 Thinking Like a Designer 3
You Are a Game Designer 4
Bartok: A Game Exercise 4
The Definition of Game 10
Summary 17
2 Game Analysis Frameworks 19
Common Frameworks for Ludology 20
MDA: Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics 20
Formal, Dramatic, and Dynamic Elements 24
The Elemental Tetrad 27
Summary 29
3 The Layered Tetrad 31
The Inscribed Layer 32
The Dynamic Layer 33
The Cultural Layer 34
The Responsibility of the Designer 36
Summary 37
4 The Inscribed Layer 39
Inscribed Mechanics 40
Inscribed Aesthetics 46
Inscribed Narrative 49
Inscribed Technology 58
Summary 59
5 The Dynamic Layer 61
The Role of the Player 62
Emergence 63
Dynamic Mechanics 64
Dynamic Aesthetics 70
Dynamic Narrative 75
Dynamic Technology 77
Summary 77
6 The Cultural Layer 79
Beyond Play 80
Cultural Mechanics 81
Cultural Aesthetics 82
Cultural Narrative 83
Cultural Technology 84
Authorized Transmedia Are Not in the Cultural Layer 85
The Cultural Impact of a Game 86
Summary 87
7 Acting Like a Designer 89
Iterative Design 90
Innovation 97
Brainstorming and Ideation 98
Changing Your Mind 101
Scoping! 103
Summary 104
8 Design Goals 105
Design Goals: An Incomplete List 106
Designer-Centric Goals 106
Player-Centric Goals 109
Summary 124
9 Paper Prototyping 125
The Benefits of Paper Prototypes 126
Paper Prototyping Tools 127
An Example of a Paper Prototype 129
Best Uses for Paper Prototyping 138
Poor Uses for Paper Prototyping 139
Summary 140
10 Game Testing 141
Why Playtest? 142
Being a Great Playtester Yourself 142
The Circles of Playtesters 143
Methods of Playtesting 146
Other Important Types of Testing 152
Summary 153
11 Math and Game Balance 155
The Meaning of Game Balance 156
Installing Apache OpenOffice Calc 156
Examining Dice Probability with Calc 157
The Math of Probability 165
Randomizer Technologies in Paper Games 170
Weighted Distributions 173
Permutations 175
Positive and Negative Feedback 176
Using Calc to Balance Weapons 177
Summary 183
12 Puzzle Design 185
Puzzles Are Almost Everywhere 186
Scott Kim on Puzzle Design 186
Puzzle Examples in Action Games 193
Summary 195
13 Guiding the Player 197
Direct Guidance 198
Indirect Guidance 200
Teaching New Skills and Concepts 207
Summary 210
14 The Digital Game Industry 211
About the Game Industry 212
Game Education 215
Getting into the Industry 217
Don’t Wait to Start Making Games! 221
Summary 222
Part II Digital Prototyping 223
15 Thinking in Digital Systems 225
Systems Thinking in Board Games 226
An Exercise in Simple Instructions 226
Game Analysis: Apple Picker 229
Summary 234
16 Introducing Our Development Environment: Unity 235
Downloading Unity 236
Introducing Our Development Environment 237
Running Unity for the First Time 241
Setting Up the Unity Window Layout 246
Learning Your Way Around Unity 251
Summary 251
17 Introducing Our