Designing Games
How do you design a video game that people love to play? In this practical guide, game designer Tynan Sylvester shows you how to create emotionally charged experiences through the right combination of game mechanics, fictional wrapping, and story. You’ll learn design principles and practices used by top studios, backed by examples from today’s most popular games. This book also takes you through the day-to-day process necessary to keep your project on track: when to build and when to test, how to work with a team, and how to avoid creative dead ends. Explore topics such as: Integration: thread fictional elements and games rules together into a single system of meaning Emergence: generate plot, character, and theme in response to a player’s decisions Compulsion: understand the difference between motivating players and fulfilling them, and how to do each Elegance: maximize a game’s emotional power and variety of play experiences while minimizing the burden on players—and your team Iteration: plan, test, and analyze your design in stages instead of trying to decide everything up front
Stats for nerds
15recommend
19mentions
18people
2013–2026years
84% recommend16% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I'm wondering if this might not be addressing the actual problem? A game such as Rimworld, with much lower details in graphics / looking less realistic, feels much more like it has a "soul".
Can highly recommend Tynan Sylvester's book "Designing Games" which also goes a bit into why Rimworld looks like it does.
I'd rather more games move into more abstract directions for portraying game elements, the majority of games should not try to look "realistic".
- To get the ball rolling, here are mine:
Fiction: Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu — I’m late to the party, but this was an enjoyable read. I’m looking forward to reading the next two in the series.
Nonfiction: Designing Games by Tynan Sylvester — I’m not a game developer, but I thought the book was really thought provoking about designing products in general. Plus, I love Rim World.
Fiction Audiobook: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman — I can’t recommend enough.
Nonfiction Audiobook: Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams — read by the author, a first hand account of the early days of Facebook, Zuck and Sandberg.
- I've learned a lot of great general game dev info from Tynan Sylvester's book [0] (creator of Rimworld). Has good info on motivation, rewards, timing, goals, design philosophy, etc.
I have next to no game dev experience and the book is a great intro to a lot of foundational topics imo. NB: the book isn't very technical and is an easy read!
[0] Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences https://a.co/d/8Im68r8
- What I found helpful:
1. The book "Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences" by Tynan Sylvester the creator of Rimworld.
2. Jonas Tyroller has some great videos on Game Design like this one: https://youtu.be/o5K0uqhxgsE
3. Some game marketing content from Chris Zukowski is also very helpful.
- I'll second this. Start small. If you think it's small, start smaller. I think a lot of people fail in their quest to learn game development because the scope of their initial ideas are huge.
Edit, I also recommend Designing Games, by Tynan Sylvester (RimWorld creator)
- not sure if this perfectly addresses your question, but "Designing Games" by Tynan Sylvester is a great resource
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