Game Design Books
Virtual Character Design for Games and Interactive Media
Virtual Character Design for Games and Interactive Media covers a breadth of topics to establish a relationship between pertinent artistic and scientific theories and good character design practice. Targeted at students, researchers, and professionals, the book aims to show how both character presentation and character performance can be enhanced through careful consideration of underlying theory.
Clockwork Game Design
Clockwork Game Design is the most functional and directly applicable theory for game design. It details the clockwork game design pattern, which focuses on building around fundamental functionality. You can then use this understanding to prescribe a system for building and refining your rulesets. A game can achieve clarity of purpose by starting with a strong core, then removing elements that conflict with that core while adding elements that support it.
Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers
Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers guides you through your initial attempts to design game mechanics. It goes beyond simple description and definition to explore in detail the issues that designers grapple with for every game they create.
Thinking about Video Games
The growth in popularity and complexity of video games has spurred new interest in how games are developed and in the research and technology behind them. David Heineman brings together some of the most iconic, influential, and interesting voices from across the gaming industry and asks them to weigh in on the past, present, and future of video games.
Game Art
Game Art is a collection of breathtaking art from 40 video games and interviews with their creators. Featuring major studios like Square Enix, Bioware, and Ubisoft as well as independents like Tale of Tales and E-Line Media, Game Art explores and celebrates the creative process that turns a video game into art.
The Uncanny Valley in Games and Animation
The Uncanny Valley in Games and Animation presents a novel theory that goes beyond previous research in that the cause of the Uncanny Valley is based on a perceived lack of empathy in a character. This book makes an original, scholarly contribution to our current understanding of the Uncanny Valley phenomenon and fills a gap in the literature by assessing the biological and social roots of the Uncanny Valley and its implications for computer-graphics animation.
Designing Games for Children
Whether you're a seasoned game designer, a children's media professional, or an instructor teaching the next generation of game designers, Designing Games for Children is the first book dedicated to service the specific needs of children's game designers. This is a hands-on manual of child psychology as it relates to game design and the common challenges designers face.
Video Game Storytelling
With increasingly sophisticated video games being consumed by an enthusiastic and expanding audience, the pressure is on game developers like never before to deliver exciting stories and engaging characters. With Video Game Storytelling, game writer and producer Evan Skolnick provides a comprehensive yet easy-to-follow guide to storytelling basics and how they can be applied at every stage of the development process. This clear, concise reference pairs relevant examples from top games and other media with a breakdown of the key roles in game development, showing how a team's shared understanding and application of core storytelling principles can deepen the player experience.
Design Games for Architecture
Design Games for Architecture teaches you how to create playful software tools based on your architectural design processes, whether or not you are familiar with game design technology. The book combines the fun and engaging aspects of video games to ease the sometimes complex process of learning software development.
Game Development with Blender
Game Development with Blender is the complete guide to the Blender game engine. More than two years in the making, the book spans topics ranging from logic brick and physics to graphics, animation, scripting, and more.
Critical Play: Radical Game Design
In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games - games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry - and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture.
Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences
Designing Games shows you how to create emotionally charged experiences through the right combination of game mechanics, fictional wrapping, and story.
3ds Max Modeling for Games
3ds Max Modeling for Games is packed with tutorials that will enhance your modeling skills and pump up your portfolio with high-quality work in no time. The book covers all of the fundamental game modeling techniques, including character and environment modeling, mapping, and texturing.
Game Interface Design
Game Interface Design immerses readers in the foundation, theory, and practice of interface creation, while including interviews with working professionals, examples from every gaming era and many genres, and hundreds of screenshots from contemporary games.
Drawing Basics and Video Game Art
Drawing Basics and Video Game Art is first to examine the connections between classical art and video games, enabling developers to create more expressive and varied emotional experiences in games. Chris Solarski gives readers a comprehensive introduction to basic and advanced drawing and design skills - light, value, color, anatomy, concept development - as well as detailed instruction for using these methods to design complex characters, worlds, and gameplay experiences
Game Design Theory
Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games presents a bold new path for analyzing and designing games. Keith Burgun offers a radical yet reasoned way of thinking about games and provides a holistic solution to understanding the difference between games and other types of interactive systems.
Game Development for iOS with Unity3D
Game Development for iOS with Unity3D takes you through the complete process of Unity iOS game development. Jeff W. Murray presents production-proven techniques and valuable tips and tricks needed to plan, build, test, and launch games for the iPhone, iPod, and iPad.
Basics of Game Design
Focusing on creating the game mechanics for data-driven games, Basics of Game Design covers role-playing, real-time strategy, first-person shooter, simulation, and other games.
Google SketchUp for Game Design
The book takes a clear, step-by-step approach to building a complete game level using SketchUp with many props and textures. This book is designed for anyone who wants to create entire 3D worlds in freely available game engines such as Unity 3D, CryEngine, Ogre, Panda3D, Unreal Engine, and Blender Game Engine.
Social Game Design: Monetization Methods and Mechanics
Social Game Design reveals what you need to know in order to create and monetize online social games. Using examples from successful game designs, you'll learn what makes these games compelling, and why people will pay to play them.
Holistic Game Development with Unity
Holistic Game Development with Unity is an authoritative guide to creating games in Unity. Taking you through game design, programming, and art, Penny de Byl uses a holistic approach to equip you with the multidisciplinary skills you need for the independent games industry.
The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985-1993
Before Prince of Persia was a best-selling video game franchise and a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, it was an Apple II computer game created and programmed by one person, Jordan Mechner. Also available as an ebook, Mechner's candid journals from the time capture his journey from his parents' basement to the forefront of the fast-growing 1980s video game industry... and the creative, technical and personal struggles that brought the prince into being and ultimately into the homes of millions of people worldwide.
The Art and Making of Star Wars The Old Republic
This gorgeous, full-color volume features the detailed art behind this highly anticipated release from BioWare and LucasArts. With character sketches, interviews, and artwork featuring the game s new weapons, starships, and previously unexplored worlds, The Art and Making of Star Wars: The Old Republic is the ultimate chronicle of the newest Star Wars experience.
The Art of Epic Mickey
The Art of Epic Mickey journey through the beautifully dark and twisted world known as Cartoon Wasteland touching on the creative process behind developing this once-in-a-lifetime vision. The book includes sketches, concept art, final frames, and stills from the actual game, plus, never-before-used art with quotes from the team that envisioned this epic tale. The physical world of the game is born directly from Disneyland, and accordingly, the book spotlights the artistic influence that Disneyland, with its iconic qualities and rides, had on the creators of Epic Mickey.
The Next Level: the World of eGames
Digital games became a high potential economical good since a while and reached as an audiovisual medium the standard of television and film. "Next Level" wants to cope with the complexity of the various aspects of the subject, as well as showing the fascinating artistic dimensions of the games.
Alter Ego
Alter Ego is a cool concept book, presenting the phenomenon of the contemporary avatar-the virtual characters gamers choose and design to engage in 3D worlds online. Portraits of gamers from the United States, Europe, China, and Japan (including leading figures of the gaming world) are paired with digital images of their alter egos, graphically dramatizing the gap between fantasy and reality.
Advanced 3D Game Programming All in One
Take your 3D game programming skills to the next level! "Advanced 3D Game Programming All in One" uses the Torque Game Engine to teach experienced 3D game programmers advanced concepts.
Artificial Intelligence for Games
Creating robust artificial intelligence is one of the greatest challenges for game developers. AI is increasingly important to games, and a game's commercial success is often dependent on the quality of the AI. Ian shows how to think about AI concepts from the start as an integral part of the game play, describes numerous examples from real games, and explores these ideas in-depth through detailed case studies.
3D Game Programming for Teens
"3D Game Programming for Teens" is a comprehensive, step-by-step introduction to 3D game programming for both teenagers and non-programmers. Organized into three parts, the book begins with an introduction to the game development industry, the game development process, and game engines including WildTangent. Part two covers JavaScript and Web programming and illustrates several different concepts including variables, loops, and arrays. The third part of the book brings all of the concepts learned together, as you incrementally build a 3D game as each skill is introduced.
Game Architecture and Design: A New Edition
Game Architecture and Design: A New Edition is a revision of the classic that you have been waiting for! This is a detailed guide to game design and planning from first concept to the start of development, including case studies of well known games. Originally published in 1999, Game Architecture and Design, has been updated by the original authors Andrew Rollings and Dave Morris. They tap back into what they teach so well and update this classic with skills and techniques found in the industry today.