The art of computer game design

What Hacker News says

1. woolionJan 2026
   Let's take the definition of "video-game art" as the art of defining interactive experiences that open themselves up upon mastery. This is the original definition of what video-games were at the start (Pac-Man, Space Invaders). The mastery takes effort to learn; the game, to incentivize this effort, rewards the player when they do well, and punish them when they don't. The almost immediate nature of the feedback loop makes learning faster than almost any other human activity.

   Given the nature of the medium, you can tackle a theme (space invaders), and even a story on top of it. This is good for critics; they know stories, they know that books are the highest form of art for intellectuals. The currency of critics in the system (media/advertisement/entertainment industry loop) is credentialism -- except for purely independent critics you have their own platform and exist through a complex bidirectional relationship with their audience.

   However, the story is almost always at odds with gameplay. A story limits the freedom the gameplay system can respond to the player by railroading certain outcomes. Often, adapting a story implies different scenes that cannot fit into a game genre, so it's more appropriate to a collection of mini-games rather than what people generally consider to be a game. Video-game stories tend towards tropes that don't cause such problems for itself, such as the 'big tournament' arc. Of course, certain genres have much more freedom (RPGs), but still a definite story means certain characters can't or have to die, etc, which remove the meaning of player choices.

   The mastery approach hasn't gone away. But critics hate it; the general philosophy of the industry is inclusivity, which is at direct odds with a competitive direct ranking of players according to skills. It requires effort, and rewards innate ability -- reflex, memory, ability to make mental computations, ... are all advantages that generally directly translate into in-game advantages. So the critics industry had been relentless at disparaging the games that directly emphasized mastery (arcade designs, the infamous 'God Hand' review) and elevate what are generally called 'movie-games' that have worked at eliminating these aspects ('Last of Us', later 'God of war') to let all players experience the story fully without interacting with the gameplay in any meaningful manner. They had to compromise because of the success of Dark Souls that brought mastery back to the forefront, but this is where the total incompetence of mainstream critics is truly glaring (see the infamous 'Cuphead' journalist moment). As a result, their critiques are rarely anything more than press releases with a final score based on production value and not based on any insight into the depth of game mechanics and systems.

   I'm surprised not to see Chris Crawford mentioned, as The Art of Computer Game Design (1984) makes the central point of this article at the very beginning, and is a primary source of video-game critique.

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2. rstupekNov 2025
   What about old school Chris Crawford's book "The Art of Computer Game Design"?
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3. cableshaftApr 2017
   The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford was the first book on the theory computer and video games. It's got quite a few ideas in there that are still relevant today.

   But I don't think it's comprehensive or constantly referenced by those in the industry (it's almost forgotten about by modern designers, I bet). I think a closer fit to a 'bible of the field' would be The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell. Lots of good information about what to think about, and you can even buy a deck of tarot-sized cards that has a compiled list of all the questions the book invites you to raise when thinking about your game on them.

   I'm still waiting for something similar that focuses more on board game design specifically, but a lot of the Book of Lenses can be applied to board games as well.

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4. neoviveApr 2012
   I have a few ideas for basic games that I've been planning to build for a few years, but never had the time. I'm comfortable with the technical and graphical requirements needed to implement desktop and mobile games, but I'm interested in obtaining a more solid foundation in game design theory prior to starting. This is strictly for side projects at the moment and not a full-time venture.

   I've read many articles on game-play mechanics and found a few books on Amazon, but I've never actually built a game. I also found some good books (Game Design: Theory and Practice by Richard Rouse III; Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford).

   Is it better to just jump in head first and start programming the game or should I get a stronger foundation in game design theory? I would be interested in some recommendations from fellow HN members that have more experience in this area.

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