The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses: A Book of Lenses: Amazon.co.uk: Jesse Schell: Books

Review

"If you're nineteen and have no idea why you adore videogames - you're just enchanted by them, you can't help yourself - dude, is this ever the book for you. You are the core demographic for this particular textual experience. Put down the hand-controller, read the book right now. I can promise you that you will grow in moral and intellectual stature. Instead of remaining a twitchy, closeted, joystick geek, like you are now, you will emerge from this patient master-class as a surprisingly broadminded adult who quotes Herman Hesse and appreciates improvisational theater and Impressionist painting. You will no longer kill off parties with your Warcraft fixation. Instead, other people your age will find themselves mysteriously drawn to you - to your air of quiet sympathy, your contemplative depth. Wise beyond your years, you will look beyond the surface details of shrieking monsters and into the deeper roots of human experience. Schell's creative approach is full of autarchic frontier self-reliance. Out there on Tomorrowland's Gameification Frontier, a theorist intellectual has to slaughter his own hogs and parse Aristotle's Poetics on the back of a shovel. But boy, it sure is roomy over there. It's a large, free, democratic book. It's Emersonian in its cheery disorganization. The book's like a barbaric yawp from the top of a Nintendo console. I'd read it now, before things get out of hand." - Bruce Sterling on Wired.com's "Beyond the Beyond" blog "As indicated by its title, Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses uses many different perspectives (the titular lenses) which each prompt their own important questions, ranging from "What problems does my game ask the players to solve?" to "What does beauty mean within the context of my game?" These distinct points are interwoven throughout a step-by-step analysis of the design process that begins with the designer and his or her basic idea, and builds successfully from there. As with Rules of Play, the wealth of information presented by The Art of Game Design may seem daunting at first, but Schell's agreeable voice eases the reader into a series of invaluable angles we can (and should) use to evaluate what we play."--1up.com

Product Description

Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design - no technological expertise is necessary. "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses" shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames. Good game design happens when you view your game from many different perspectives, or lenses. While touring through the unusual territory that is game design, this book gives the reader one hundred of these lenses - one hundred sets of insightful questions to ask yourself that will help make your game better. These lenses are gathered from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, writing, puzzle design, and anthropology. Anyone who reads this book will be inspired to become a better game designer - and will understand how to do it. Jesse Schell is a highly recognizable name within the game industry - he is the former chair of the International Game Developer's Association, and has designed many successful games, including Disney's award-winning Toontown Online. The book's design methodology was developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center, co-founded by Dr. Randy Pausch of "Last Lecture" fame. 100 'lenses' are scattered throughout the book. These are boxed sets of questions, each a different way of seeing a game that will inspire the creative process. This title includes 500 pages of detailed, practical instruction on creating world-class games that will be played again and again. It is winner of Game Developer's 2008 Front Line Award in the book category.

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

A great book! 15 Dec 2009

By Edouard Imbert

Format:Paperback

Jesse Schell's Art of Game Design is a great book. With a variety of anecdotes and definitions it gives really useful - and relevant - explanations about what a game designer's objectives are. Although Schell writes that game design isn't an exact science, the book breaks down games into small elements in order to show what they are really made of - spaces, structures, mechanics etc, and describes them one by one in a very comprehensive fashion. He also writes a lot about entertainment in general, allowing the reader to get valuable clues about why a movie, book or game meets success, and why some other does not.

We, game designers (especially students), often find it difficult to put into words what really defines our profession, and it all can get a bit blurry when you don't know how to call this or that. What's so great about Art of Game Design is that it helps you put words on things. Througout the book I kept having this pleasant feeling of, "heeey, I knew that, so it's how you actually call it?"

Also, one of the most interesting parts of the book are the "lenses". Through these, Schell shows ways to identify problematics in the building of your game by looking at it from certain perspectives; then, using the lenses, it becomes easy to see what's wrong and should be changed / corrected, or what works well and should be made more visible.

With helpful - and often funny - considerations about narration, target demographics, creative thinking, architecture and design in general, Art of Game Design will teach you many, many things if you're a student, and will provide useful tools if you're a professional. In either case, you will keep the book on your desk after reading it and you'll come back to it very, very often.

So again, a great book!

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

this book is hard to beat 18 May 2011

By Alex P

I am not a professional game designer but I am trying to get there as a hobbyist. I can do programming well, I have ideas but I needed to find a way to transform them into something that would be fun for me to do and for the user to experience. I have tried a couple of game design books but I must say this is the best one and is very inspiring. It tries to explain what the process of designing a game means while looking at games from all different point of views: game theory, psychology, entertainment, social interaction, technology, etc...
Definitely a must for any (professional/amateur/wannabe/anything else) game designer out there.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

Fantastic for Students 8 Nov 2011

By Ashley

I was quite skeptical as to how muh this book would be of use when my tutor recommended it for my course in computer game design. But it has been a massive influence on how I now create games, be it on a computer or the board game that I made for an assignment.
Provides strong philosophical, anthropological and psychological insights into many matters of game design, and encourages many different methods and use of view points of games and their inner workings.
I'm always carrying thus book in my bag and will often refer back to the lenses in times of doubt and unclear paths forward.
Absolutely fantastic.