Designing Games - A Guide to Engineering Experiences by Tynan Sylvester (O'Reilly Media)

 February 5, 2013

When I read the first lines of the description “Ready to give your design skills a real boost? This eye-opening book helps you explore the design structure behind most of today’s hit video games. You’ll learn principles and practices for crafting games that generate emotionally charged experiences—a combination of elegant game mechanics, compelling fiction, and pace that fully immerses players.” on the O’Reilly website I thought it was a very well thought eye-catcher phrase to sell more books. Reading the book I understand that the phrase is 100% truthful. This is a must-have book to anyone interested in the Theory of Games and in designing a game of any kind (not only computer game).

This book is full of real-life example therefore is really easy to understand if you have some gaming experience (and if you don’t, please, do not design a game).

The book is divided in three sections. In the first section the author explain us some ways to attract the player toward the game and to keep him interested for the whole game. The second section gives you a lot of ideas and things to be considered before the process of planning the game. In the third section the author gives us a lot more information that will be useful to bring our idea to the reality.

This is the best book I’ve read in 2013 so far and I’m sure it will be one of the best book I can read in 2013.

I strongly suggest this book to whoever is planning to project or deploy a video-game or a real-game and to whoever is interested in the Theory of Games.

You can find this book at the O’Reilly website.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program