February 2014
Beginner
240 pages
6h 49m
English
book
A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design
by Anna Anthropy, Naomi Clark
Overview
Master the Principles and Vocabulary of Game Design
Why aren’t videogames getting
better? Why does it feel like we’re playing the same
games, over and over again? Why aren’t games helping us
transform our lives, like great music, books, and movies
do?
The problem is language. We still
don’t know how to talk about game design. We can’t
share our visions. We forget what works (and doesn’t). We
don’t learn from history. It’s too hard to
improve.
The breakthrough starts here. A Game
Design Vocabulary gives us the complete game design framework we
desperately need—whether we create games, study them, review
them, or build businesses on them.
Craft amazing experiences. Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark share foundational principles, examples, and exercises that help you create great player experiences…complement intuition with design discipline…and craft games that succeed brilliantly on every level.
Liberate yourself from stale clichés and genres
Tell great stories: go way beyond cutscenes and text dumps
Control the crucial relationships between game “verbs” and “objects”
Wield the full power of development, conflict, climax, and resolution
Shape scenes, pacing, and player choices
Deepen context via art, animation, music, and sound
Help players discover, understand, engage, and “talk back” to you
Effectively use resistance and difficulty: the “push and pull” of games
Design holistically: integrate visuals, audio, and controls
Communicate a design vision everyone can understand
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.