Challenges for Game Designers
- 6h 33m
- Brenda Brathwaite, Ian Schreiber
- Cengage Course PTR
- 2009
Welcome to a book written to challenge you, improve your brainstorming abilities, and sharpen your game design skills! Challenges for Game Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers is filled with enjoyable, interesting, and challenging exercises to help you become a better video game designer, whether you are a professional or aspire to be. Each chapter covers a different topic important to game designers, and was taken from actual industry experience. After a brief overview of the topic, there are five challenges that each take less than two hours and allow you to apply the material, explore the topic, and expand your knowledge in that area. Each chapter also includes 10 “non-digital shorts” to further hone your skills. None of the challenges in the book require any programming or a computer, but many of the topics feature challenges that can be made into fully functioning games. The book is useful for professional designers, aspiring designers, and instructors who teach game design courses, and the challenges are great for both practice and homework assignments. The book can be worked through chapter by chapter, or you can skip around and do only the challenges that interest you. As with anything else, making great games takes practice and Challenges for Game Designers provides you with a collection of fun, thought provoking, and of course, challenging activities that will help you hone vital skills and become the best game designer you can be.
About the Authors
As a 26-year veteran of the video games industry, Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer and Chair of the Interactive Design and Game Development department at the Savannah College of Art & Design. She has worked on 22 internationally known titles including the award-winning Wizardry series of role playing games and the award-winning Jagged Alliance series of strategy role-playing games. Brenda serves on the board of the International Game Developers Association and is a passionate anti-censorship advocate. She is a regular speaker at universities and conferences, and according to a 2007 article in Next Generation magazine written by Ernest Adams, Brathwaite is the longest, continuously serving woman in video game development today. She is the author of Sex in Video Games and Challenges for Game Designers.
Ian Schreiber has been in the industry for 7 years, first as a programmer and then as a game designer. He has worked on 5 published game titles, including Playboy: the Mansion and the Nintendo DS version of Marvel Trading Card Game. He has also developed training/simulation games for two Fortune 500 companies. For the last year, Ian has taught game design and development at Ohio University, and was mentoring college students at several universities for years before that.
In this Book
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The Basics
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Game Design Atoms
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Puzzle Design
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Converting Digital to Physical
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Elements of Chance
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Elements of "Strategic" Skill
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Elements of "Twitch" Skill
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Chance and Skill: Finding the Balance
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What Is Intellectual Property?
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Creating Sequels
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Targeting a Market
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Learning an Unfamiliar Genre
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Designing a Game to Tell a Story
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Adding and Subtracting Mechanics
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"But Make It Multiplayer"
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Creating a User Interface
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Games as Art
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Games as a Teaching Tool
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Serious Games
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Casual Games
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Social Networks and Games
