This book is designed to challenge you, improve your brainstorming abilities, and allow you to have fun and sharpen your design skills whether you’re a professional designer, an aspiring designer, a hobbyist, or a student of game design.
[...]... and Chutes and Ladders) A video game is a game (as defined above) that uses a digital video screen of some kind, in some way.”2 6 Challenges for Game Designers In this book, and in our own careers, when we speak of a game, we are referring to games in general—from the ancient Go to the latest Madden Digital or non-digital, the underlying fundamentals of a game and therefore of game design are all the... 258 Iron Designer Challenge 5—Living History 259 Non-Digital Shorts References 19 261 262 Serious Games 263 Types of Serious Games 263 Training Games 263 Health Games 264 Social Commentary Games 264 Advergames and Anti-Advergames 265 Educational Games 265 Social Awareness Games 265 The Purpose Is the Core 266 The Focus Test 266 Why Serious Games? 266 Challenges 267 Challenge 1—Katrina 267 Challenge... primary text for an introductory class on the practice of game design As a supplemental exercise text for numerous classes As a primary text for a course on non-digital game design Introduction and Welcome xxiii If your students have already taken an introductory course in the theory of game design, this book can provide a series of challenges to form the basis for a course in practical game design... in the background Game design can be tuned out or tuned in the same way If you actively listen for the possibility and go with it, you will find game ideas everywhere 10 Challenges for Game Designers FIGURE 1.5 A group of game- design students working on their own table-top RPG, complete with combat system and game master (GM) Their final design was influenced by a wide variety of games You Are Dead... Designer Challenge 5—World of Pain 247 Non-Digital Shorts Resources 18 248 248 Games as a Teaching Tool 249 What About Those Crazy Stories I Hear? 249 Using Games as a Catalyst for Learning 250 xviii Contents Designing and Modifying Games for Students 250 Find the Fun 250 Start with Systems 251 Use Games They Play 252 Assign Game Design 252 Challenges 253 Challenge 1—Old Game, New Life 253 Challenge 2—Educational... some way to innovate on previous games in the genre or with a similar theme, if there are any Digital games actually greatly expanded the core possibility that we as game designers can choose from since they are capable of so many things that non-digital games cannot do Taking into account the whole variety of games—from big-budget titles to serious games— the range of game cores is tremendous W HERE... skills, and looks, and…) Brenda approached Ian, asking him to co-author a book proposal she was writing (not this one) Ian counter-offered with a book of game design exercises, based on the exercises they used to do when they worked together Interest in “low-tech” game design exercises had already been shown on Game_ Edu, an IGDA mailing list for game development educators, and no book like this existed This... expectations That’s one of the cardinal sins of game design itself This chapter then serves as a tutorial or “intro level” to this entire book If you’re relatively new to the field of game design, this chapter is for you 1 2 Challenges for Game Designers W HAT I S G AME D ESIGN ? Game design is the process of creating the content and rules of a game Good game design is the process of creating goals that... making in a game: Troop placement in a real-time strategy game (RTS) or a turn-based strategy game Point allocation during character advancement in a role-playing game (RPG) Choosing which piece to move in Chess Aiming and firing your weapon in a first-person shooter (FPS) Pressing the right buttons at the right time in Guitar Hero Whenever the player is allowed to exercise choice in a game and that... mathematical patterns in a game This is the only game design task that is common to all games, because all games have rules Therefore, most of the challenges in this book involve system design In particular, Chapters 2, 5, 6, 7 and 8 give a starting point for system designers Content design is the creation of characters, items, puzzles, and missions While it’s much more common in video games, role playing