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 5: Game Theory and Rational Decision-Making

How little we think about how it is we think.

—NOREEN HERTZ

A field of study known as game theory is often confused with game design or game studies. People who have never designed or developed games before often think that you must use game theory because it must be a “theory of how to make games.” It is not. Game theory is the specific study of strategic decision-making, often in situations of conflict. Organizationally, it’s seen as a field of mathematics.

The “game” in game theory refers to the situations between multiple actors. For instance, game theory treats the real prospect of nuclear war between two countries as a “game.” This definition is different from the definition that designers ...

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