The Art of Game Design
Presents the fundamentals of game design from one of the world's top game designers. Exploring the unusual territory that is game design, the book demonstrates how the basic principles of psychology used in board games, card games, and athletic games also work in top-quality video games. The author gives readers 100+ sets of insightful questions to ask themselves to make their games better. These questions provide insight from fields as diverse as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, puzzle design, and anthropology.
Stats for nerds
35recommend
54mentions
48people
2010–2026years
74% recommend26% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I wanted to create a game (Pre-AI) and thought it would be easy. Turns out it is not at all.
Sure you might get lucky with the next Angry bird, but there is a whole range of skills required to make a good game, and actually get people to play it.
I even read a couple of books which gave me a better understanding of how out of my depth I was. Books were "Theory of Fun", "Achievement unlocked" and "The art of game design".
AI here appears to be accelerating the ability to see those gaps faster. I think without the understanding of those gaps anything created is going to be lacking.
- I’m not a game designer, but 15 years after initially reading it, Jesse Schell’s “The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses” really sticks with me in any product design context. Organizing your thoughts around the lenses presented in this book makes for productive discussion, and can turn subjective points (an example might be how frictionless or not a UI element might be) into more objective points. I suggest checking it out. The author posted a deck of the lenses here: https://deck.artofgamedesign.com
- I wouldn’t say A Theory of Fun is “the book.” It’s more a coffee table read. “The book” is Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design
- I recommend focusing on general design principles and mindset.
- Read "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman - once you understand what makes a good (or bad) door handle, you'll start seeing design patterns everywhere.
- Read "The Art of Game Design" by Jesse Schell. It discusses how to create engaging experiences, and games are particularly unforgiving. While people might tolerate an annoying tax app because they have to use it, they'll immediately abandon a game that's even slightly too frustrating, confusing, or boring.
- I’m new to game dev and struggling with my first project, Space Zero. I’d love recommendations for resources (books, tutorials) to learn game design—especially after my demo flopped. For context, I shared it on Hacker News, Reddit, and Product Hunt recently, and here’s why I’m making it, plus what I learned.
I grew up in Korea, a quiet kid hooked on Civilization and Minecraft—games were my escape, teaching me through play. After military service, I dropped college to co-found Disquiet, a social network for software builders. Now, 1.5 months into Space Zero with friends, I want it to be a space where people create and play together. Personally games shaped me, and I’d love to give that back.
But I’m clueless. don’t know design or mechanics. Our demo (collecting/crafting) got 500 signups in 4 days on HN/PH, but feedback was tough: - No clear goal, felt aimless. - AI crafting items lacked purpose, just swing the result. - Too barebones for a demo.
Posting on Reddit’s indie dev sub (my first try) got some “you did it wrong” too. It stung, but I see now: purpose matters, mechanics need depth. I’m reading The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell—it’s great so far, but I need more.
Any books, videos, or communities that helped you grasp design or make fun mechanics? I’ll keep building Space Zero quietly, aiming to fix these gaps. Any recs mean a lot to a newbie like me!
- The Art of Game Design is a very good jumping off point; it's how i got my start, and it gives you a lot of windows to look through.
A few years after getting that book, I started to work professionally with people building games, mostly white-labelled projects or contract work, which was the studio's bread and butter. But actually working with people developed my understanding of a) the relative value that artists, designers, and animators bring to the project, relative to my own set of skills and b) how to solve the sorts of problems that ship games. I am a programmer, and I use my programmer skills to give designers and artists what they ask for.
All of that to say: the best next step is working with folks, ideally some who have had experience. Book learning will only get you so far.
That being said, here are a few more books I have seen recommended in my sphere:
- The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander (this is not about games, but design generally)
- Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
- Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory (this is a technical book about modern game engines)
Finally, Liz England (a designer who lowkey helped me not lose hope when I was breaking into the industry) has/had a blog where she talks about game design books. I cannot personally vouch for the titles, but I trust Liz England [1]
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