Skip to Content
Players Making Decisions: Game Design Essentials and the Art of Understanding Your Players
book

Players Making Decisions: Game Design Essentials and the Art of Understanding Your Players

by Zack Hiwiller
December 2015
Beginner
480 pages
13h 25m
English
New Riders
Content preview from Players Making Decisions: Game Design Essentials and the Art of Understanding Your Players

Part 1: Getting Started

Ideas are like stars—numerous and dazzling, but it takes a lot of work to confirm life near one.

—DANIEL SOLIS

I teach game design to students in one of the larger game design programs in the world. I see hundreds of students a year, and I see a fear in them. That fear is that they have a desire—to be a game designer—and they don’t know what transition they will have to go through to become one. The role seems so glorious and fulfilling, so certainly there must be a change between their present, mundane self and their future-inspired “artiste” self. Many seem to believe that a professor will come down from a mountaintop with stone tablets, they will have some divine epiphany, and all will become clear. Even you, dear reader, ...

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

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’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.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI 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.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’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.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'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.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

Players Making Decisions, 2nd Edition

Players Making Decisions, 2nd Edition

Zach Hiwiller
100 Principles of Game Design

100 Principles of Game Design

Wendy Despain, Keyvan Acosta, Liz Canacari-Rose, Michael Deneen, Zach Hiwiller, Jeff Howard, Christina Kadinger, Chris Keeling, Casey Kuczik

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780134394657Purchase book