Game Design: Principles and Practice

Author: [US] Richard Rouse III
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-10-01
Features: This book presents the entire game development process, gaining insights into the techniques of top game designers through interviews with experts. By analyzing several games in detail, it explores the factors that contribute to a game's success and identifies more effective ways to bring game ideas to life, including the use of focus, document design, story refinement, script and technical specification writing, etc. The appendix features a complete design document that exemplifies the principles of excellent game development documentation. "To burst with the creativity of a tide"—this is what the book aims to convey to readers, game designers, game developers, and game enthusiasts. When I first saw this game book, I wasn’t particularly excited and even had some reservations because it initially declared that it wouldn’t cover game programming. Was the content good? Was it practical? But halfway through, these concerns completely dissipated, and I was even deeply captivated by the book’s content. Written by multiple renowned game development experts, several of whose works are classics in the gaming industry, the book begins with classic game development case studies, introducing their backgrounds, tools, challenges, development processes, and marketing strategies, giving us an in-depth understanding of the many aspects behind game development. Next come interviews with game developers, whose witty and lively language reveals their philosophies, styles, structural design, story design, script design, opening animation design, artificial intelligence (AI) design, and documentation design, among other things. The book is filled with the experiences and techniques of game development design, with the developers’ joys, regrets, successes, and triumphs vividly flowing from the pages. For game developers and players alike, such a game design book is a rare gem!