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

Anna Anthropy, game designer extraordinaire, will show you how to do everything from building a game map to creating animations and debugging the end product. Take a peek inside the history of video game design, learn programming basics, and turn your ideas into creative games that you can play and share with your friends.

Learn to make interactive games with Scratch—the beginner-friendly, block-based programming language from the MIT Media Lab! Anna Anthropy, game designer extraordinaire, will show you how to do everything from building a game map to creating animations and debugging the end product. Take a peek inside the history of video game design, learn programming basics, and turn your ideas into creative games that you can play and share with your friends.Learn how to:•Draw characters like a hungry, leaf-eating bug•Animate characters—make them walk, jump, climb, and fall!•Create objects for your player to collect and obstacles to avoid•Design multiple levels to create a cave exploring platform game•Create sound effects and music for your games•Share your games online and use player feedback to improve your gamesIsn’t it time to Make Your Own Scratch Games? The world is waiting!Covers Scratch 3.0

A playful, kid-friendly introduction to game development using Twine, a free online scripting tool for creative storytelling. Author is a well-known professional game designer.Make Your Own Twine Games! shows you how to make interactive fiction games using Twine, a beginner-friendly online tool for creating non-linear stories. Readers use basic web scripting to design choose-your-own-adventure games using author''s games as examples. Anthropy walks readers through game development process from start to finish, covering everything from mapping out a game''s structure and story to debugging the end product. Readers will understand what makes designing video games challenging and fun, and will feel ready to bring their own game ideas to life.

Make Your Own PuzzleScript Games! shows you how to use PuzzleScript, an open source tool for making puzzle games using HTML-like scripting language. Anthropy walks readers through game development process, covering everything from problem-solving and level design to making winning and losing fun. Readers will understand what makes designing video games challenging and fun, and they'll be ready to bring their own game ideas to life.

Fun introduction to game development by well-known game designer using PuzzleScript, a free online tool for creating puzzles/platform games.Make Your Own PuzzleScript Games! shows you how to use PuzzleScript, an open source tool for making puzzle games using HTML-like scripting language. Anthropy walks readers through game development process, covering everything from problem-solving and level design to making winning and losing fun. Readers will understand what makes designing video games challenging and fun, and they''ll be ready to bring their own game ideas to life.

Part critical essay, part manifesto, part DIY guide, and altogether unprecedented, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters shows why the multi-billion dollar videogame industry needs to change—and how a new generation of artists can change it. Indie game designer extraordinaire Anna Anthropy makes an ardent plea for the industry to move beyond the corporate systems of production and misogynistic culture and to support games that represent a wider variety of human experiences.   Rise of the Videogame Zinesters is a call to arms for anyone who's ever dreamed of making their own games. Anna’s guide to game design encourages budding designers to bring their unique backgrounds and experiences to their creations and widen the playing field of an industry that has for too long catered to an adolescent male consumer base. Anna’s newest game, Dys4ia, an autobiographical game about her experiences with hormone replacement therapy, has been featured in The Penny Arcade, IndieGames, and TigSource.  

"Anna Anthropy is a key personality in the ongoing paradigm shift that is slowly changing the way videogames are understood, by creators and players, and by the wider culture." —Patrick Alexander, Eegra.com"Equal parts autobiography, ethnography, and how-to manual, this book concisely makes the case for the unique power of ''zinester'' games."—Adam Parrish, NYU''s Interactive Telecommunication Program (Tisch School of the Arts), and author of the ZZT game "Winter""These days, everybody can make and distribute a photograph, or a video, or a book. Rise of the Videogame Zinesters shows you that everyone can make a videogame, too. But why should they? For Anna Anthropy, it''s not for fame or for profit, but for the strange, aimless beauty of personal creativity.”—Ian Bogost, Director, Graduate Program in Digital Media, Georgia Institute of Technology"Rise is a great guidebook to understanding—and more importantly, participating in—this dynamically evolving culture." —Jim Munroe, co-founder of the Hand Eye Society and the Difference Engine Initiative“Here, Anna Anthropy demonstrates how people from every background and walk of life are breaking free of the commercial cowardice of major publishers, and bringing their individual visions of the game to life. . . . If game design is to be an art, as those of us who love games fervently hope, it must be rescued from its crushing commercial pressures. You can be a part of its future.” —Greg Costikyan, author of I Have No Mouth and I Must Design"Anna gives the world of video games a crucial perspective from her seat of authority within outsider culture, and illustrates how essential it is for the space to empower voices of all kinds if it is to evolve."  —Leigh Alexander, editor-at-large of Gamasutra

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

Anna Anthropy, game designer extraordinaire, will show you how to do everything from building a game map to creating animations and debugging the end product. Take a peek inside the history of video game design, learn programming basics, and turn your ideas into creative games that you can play and share with your friends.

Learn to make interactive games with Scratch—the beginner-friendly, block-based programming language from the MIT Media Lab! Anna Anthropy, game designer extraordinaire, will show you how to do everything from building a game map to creating animations and debugging the end product. Take a peek inside the history of video game design, learn programming basics, and turn your ideas into creative games that you can play and share with your friends.Learn how to:•Draw characters like a hungry, leaf-eating bug•Animate characters—make them walk, jump, climb, and fall!•Create objects for your player to collect and obstacles to avoid•Design multiple levels to create a cave exploring platform game•Create sound effects and music for your games•Share your games online and use player feedback to improve your gamesIsn’t it time to Make Your Own Scratch Games? The world is waiting!Covers Scratch 3.0

A playful, kid-friendly introduction to game development using Twine, a free online scripting tool for creative storytelling. Author is a well-known professional game designer.Make Your Own Twine Games! shows you how to make interactive fiction games using Twine, a beginner-friendly online tool for creating non-linear stories. Readers use basic web scripting to design choose-your-own-adventure games using author''s games as examples. Anthropy walks readers through game development process from start to finish, covering everything from mapping out a game''s structure and story to debugging the end product. Readers will understand what makes designing video games challenging and fun, and will feel ready to bring their own game ideas to life.

Make Your Own PuzzleScript Games! shows you how to use PuzzleScript, an open source tool for making puzzle games using HTML-like scripting language. Anthropy walks readers through game development process, covering everything from problem-solving and level design to making winning and losing fun. Readers will understand what makes designing video games challenging and fun, and they'll be ready to bring their own game ideas to life.

Fun introduction to game development by well-known game designer using PuzzleScript, a free online tool for creating puzzles/platform games.Make Your Own PuzzleScript Games! shows you how to use PuzzleScript, an open source tool for making puzzle games using HTML-like scripting language. Anthropy walks readers through game development process, covering everything from problem-solving and level design to making winning and losing fun. Readers will understand what makes designing video games challenging and fun, and they''ll be ready to bring their own game ideas to life.

Part critical essay, part manifesto, part DIY guide, and altogether unprecedented, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters shows why the multi-billion dollar videogame industry needs to change—and how a new generation of artists can change it. Indie game designer extraordinaire Anna Anthropy makes an ardent plea for the industry to move beyond the corporate systems of production and misogynistic culture and to support games that represent a wider variety of human experiences.   Rise of the Videogame Zinesters is a call to arms for anyone who's ever dreamed of making their own games. Anna’s guide to game design encourages budding designers to bring their unique backgrounds and experiences to their creations and widen the playing field of an industry that has for too long catered to an adolescent male consumer base. Anna’s newest game, Dys4ia, an autobiographical game about her experiences with hormone replacement therapy, has been featured in The Penny Arcade, IndieGames, and TigSource.  

"Anna Anthropy is a key personality in the ongoing paradigm shift that is slowly changing the way videogames are understood, by creators and players, and by the wider culture." —Patrick Alexander, Eegra.com"Equal parts autobiography, ethnography, and how-to manual, this book concisely makes the case for the unique power of ''zinester'' games."—Adam Parrish, NYU''s Interactive Telecommunication Program (Tisch School of the Arts), and author of the ZZT game "Winter""These days, everybody can make and distribute a photograph, or a video, or a book. Rise of the Videogame Zinesters shows you that everyone can make a videogame, too. But why should they? For Anna Anthropy, it''s not for fame or for profit, but for the strange, aimless beauty of personal creativity.”—Ian Bogost, Director, Graduate Program in Digital Media, Georgia Institute of Technology"Rise is a great guidebook to understanding—and more importantly, participating in—this dynamically evolving culture." —Jim Munroe, co-founder of the Hand Eye Society and the Difference Engine Initiative“Here, Anna Anthropy demonstrates how people from every background and walk of life are breaking free of the commercial cowardice of major publishers, and bringing their individual visions of the game to life. . . . If game design is to be an art, as those of us who love games fervently hope, it must be rescued from its crushing commercial pressures. You can be a part of its future.” —Greg Costikyan, author of I Have No Mouth and I Must Design"Anna gives the world of video games a crucial perspective from her seat of authority within outsider culture, and illustrates how essential it is for the space to empower voices of all kinds if it is to evolve."  —Leigh Alexander, editor-at-large of Gamasutra