Summary

Despite the proliferation of video games in the twenty-first century, the theory of game design is largely underdeveloped, leaving designers on their own to understand what games really are. Helping you produce better games, Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games presents a bold new path for analyzing and designing games.

The author 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. He clearly details the definitions, concepts, and methods that form the fundamentals of this philosophy. He also uses the philosophy to analyze the history of games and modern trends as well as to design games.

Providing a robust, useful philosophy for game design, this book gives you real answers about what games are and how they work. Through this paradigm, you will be better equipped to create fun games.

Choice Review

After many years of struggling for acceptance and respect in academia, the discipline of game studies has finally become mainstream. Professional associations, university departments, and faculty positions in game studies proliferate. It is thus inexplicable that Burgun, a game designer, writer, visual artist, and educator, has chosen to write a book entitled Game Design Theory: A New Philosophy for Understanding Games without a single citation to either the growing amount of academic literature on game studies or the founding philosophers of game studies such as Johan Huizinga and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. This volume cursorily touches on a wide range of topics relating to game play and game design and offers the author's individual opinion as fact. His recommendations for budding designers include the following: "If you want to become a great game designer, it's worth taking at least a brief look at related disciplines." He also makes broad generalizations sure to alienate some players: "... [PC gamers] are less lost than the gamers in the console world." The book provides very basic descriptions of game genres and some history of classic games; however, other books do so much more effectively and accurately. Readers may wish to consult Encyclopedia of Video Games, edited by Mark Wolf (CH, Feb'13, 50-3026). Summing Up: Not recommended. E. Bertozzi Long Island University