This book was written for anyone interested in learning about applied game design. It is skewed somewhat toward new game developers, but it has plenty to say about the design process itself that should be useful to game developers at all levels of familiarity with the process of building games.
The material is organized chronologically from the roots of the design process right on through to the final or “gold” development phase as a game comes to full fruition and is delivered into the hands of game players.
Each chapter, read in order, will guide you through a basic game development curve and introduce you to many fundamental design areas and challenges. However, you also can jump directly to specific chapters of particular interest to you, or start with the support information located in the associated appendixes, which can be a useful starting point for further exploration into several of the key chapter topics presented here.
My purpose in writing this book is to try to provide new developers and seasoned pros alike with some common ground in their own approaches to game design specifics. Much has been written about game design theory, but far less has been written about what might be called applied game design. Make no mistake: I still believe that game design theory is important. I think it can be safely assumed that theory tends to inform
and inspire application. I simply wanted to try to move much closer to a discussion about applied game design for all interested parties, and I have some very practical reasons for doing so.
