Make Your Own Board Game

Make Your Own Board Game PDF

Author: Jesse Terrance Daniels

Publisher: Storey Publishing

Published: 2022-08-30

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 1635863414

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"Game design expert Jesse Terrance Daniels teaches all the fundamentals of game design, from rule-setting to physical construction, along with original illustrations that capture the ethos and energy of the young, contemporary gaming community"--

Game Production

Game Production PDF

Author: Geoffrey Engelstein

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2020-12-21

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 1000290980

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Description: Many new games are from first-time designers or are self-published, so there is a tremendous thirst for information about the nuts and bolts of tabletop game design. While there are many books about the design process in terms of mechanisms and player experience, there are no books that cover the arts and crafts aspects of how to create a prototype, software and physical tools that can be used, graphic design and rules writing, and considerations for final production. Gamecraft: Prototyping and Producing Your Board Game presents this information in a single volume which will be invaluable for up-and-coming designers and publishers. Key Features: The text compiles information from many websites, blogs, Facebook groups, subreddits, and the author’s extensive experience in an easy-to-read volume. The text illustrates how to lay out and assemble the physical aspects of an effective board game. The book is divided into two sections for readability and covers a large array of different techniques. Geoffrey Engelstein is the designer of many tabletop games, including The Ares Project, the Space Cadets series, The Dragon & Flagon, and The Expanse. He is the founder of Ludology, a bi-weekly podcast about game design, and a contributor to the Dice Tower podcast with his bi-weekly GameTek segments that discuss the math, science, and psychology of games. He has also published several books, including GameTek: The Math and Science of Gaming, Achievement Relocked: Loss Aversion and Game Design, and Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design. He is on the faculty of the NYU Game Center as an adjunct professor for Board Game Design and has been invited to speak at PAX, GenCon, Metatopia, and the Game Developers Conference.

GameTek

GameTek PDF

Author: Geoffrey Engelstein

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2019-02-01

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1460711122

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What games can teach us about life, the universe and ourselves. If you shuffle a deck of cards what are the odds that the sequence is unique? What is the connection between dice, platonic solids and Newton's theory of gravity? What is more random: a dice tower or a number generator? Can you actually employ a strategy for a game as basic as Rock-Paper-Scissors? These are all questions that are thrown up in games and life. Games involve chance, choice, competition, innovation, randomness, memory, stand-offs and paradoxes - aspects that designers manipulate to make a game interesting, fun and addictive, and players try to master for enjoyment and winning. But they also provide a fascinating way for us to explore our world; to understand how our minds tick, our numbers add up, and our laws of physics work. This is a book that tackles the big questions of life through the little questions of games. With short chapters on everything from memory games to the Prisoner's Dilemma, to Goedel's theorems, GameTek is fascinating reading anyone for who wants to explore the world from a new perspective - and a must-read book for serious designers and players. PRAISE 'Math, physics, psychology and all the other stuff you didn't even realise you were using while playing board games! Dr E has opened the door to the game under the game in fascinating, fun detail. Now you have NO reason to ever lose again! Rock!' Tommy Dean, board-gamer and stand-up comic

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design

Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design PDF

Author: Geoffrey Engelstein

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2022-03-02

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 1000539245

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"If games were lands to be explored, they would be far too large for one explorer to master. Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design is a much-needed atlas for the explorer—giving a framework of what to look for in a game, and a focus for game play that will be useful for understanding the whole. The game scholar will find this invaluable." —Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering "People talk about the art of game design or the craft of game design. Engelstein and Shalev hone in on the science of game design with a razor-sharp scalpel. This book will be within arm’s reach as I work on games and I expect it to be consulted often." —Rob Daviau, creator of Risk: Legacy and Chief Restoration Officer of Restoration Games "The most comprehensive and well-researched encyclopedia of game mechanisms that I’ve seen to date." —Matt Leacock, creator of Pandemic Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms, Second Edition compiles hundreds of game mechanisms, organized by category. The book can be read cover-to-cover and used as a reference to solve a specific design problem or for inspiration and research on new designs. This second edition collects even more mechanisms, expands on and updates existing entries, and includes color images. Building Blocks is a great starting point for new designers, a handy guidebook for the experienced, and an ideal classroom reference. Each Game Mechanisms Entry Contains: The definition of the mechanism An explanatory diagram of the mechanism Discussion of how the mechanism is used in successful games Considerations for implementing the mechanism in new designs Geoffrey Engelstein is a game designer and educator. His designs include the Space Cadets series, The Dragon & Flagon, The Expanse, and Super Skill Pinball. He has published several books on game design, including GameTek: The Math and Science of Gaming, Achievement Relocked, and Game Production. He is on the faculty of the NYU Game Center as an adjunct professor for Board Game Design and has been invited to speak about game design at PAX, GenCon, Metatopia, and the Game Developers Conference. Isaac Shalev is a game designer, author, and educational games consultant. He has designed tabletop titles including Seikatsu, Waddle, and Show & Tile. He runs Sage70, Inc., a data strategy and games-based learning consultancy that serves nonprofit organizations. He lives in Cary, North Carolina with his wife, three children, and a dog.

The Game Inventor's Guidebook

The Game Inventor's Guidebook PDF

Author: Brian Tinsman

Publisher: Morgan James Publishing

Published: 2008-11-01

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1600377904

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A guide to developing and selling your game idea from a game design manager at Wizards of the Coast, the world’s largest tabletop hobby game company. Do you have an idea for a board game, card game, role-playing game or tabletop game? Have you ever wondered how to get it published? For many years Brian Tinsman reviewed new game submissions for Hasbro, the largest game company in the US. With The Game Inventor’s Guidebook: How to Invent and Sell Board Games, Card Games, Role-playing Games & Everything in Between! Tinsman presents the only book that lays out step-by-step advice, guidelines and instructions for getting a new game from idea to retail shelf.

Achievement Relocked

Achievement Relocked PDF

Author: Geoffrey Engelstein

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13: 026204353X

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How game designers can use the psychological phenomenon of loss aversion to shape player experience. Getting something makes you feel good, and losing something makes you feel bad. But losing something makes you feel worse than getting the same thing makes you feel good. So finding $10 is a thrill; losing $10 is a tragedy. On an “intensity of feeling” scale, loss is more intense than gain. This is the core psychological concept of loss aversion, and in this book game creator Geoffrey Engelstein explains, with examples from both tabletop and video games, how it can be a tool in game design. Loss aversion is a profound aspect of human psychology, and directly relevant to game design; it is a tool the game designer can use to elicit particular emotions in players. Engelstein connects the psychology of loss aversion to a range of phenomena related to games, exploring, for example, the endowment effect—why, when an object is ours, it gains value over an equivalent object that is not ours—as seen in the Weighted Companion Cube in the game Portal; the framing of gains and losses to manipulate player emotions; Deal or No Deal’s use of the utility theory; and regret and competence as motivations, seen in the context of legacy games. Finally, Engelstein examines the approach to loss aversion in three games by Uwe Rosenberg, charting the designer’s increasing mastery.

Theory of Fun for Game Design

Theory of Fun for Game Design PDF

Author: Raph Koster

Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1932111972

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Discusses the essential elements in creating a successful game, how playing games and learning are connected, and what makes a game boring or fun.

Rules of Play

Rules of Play PDF

Author: Katie Salen Tekinbas

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2003-09-25

Total Pages: 680

ISBN-13: 9780262240451

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An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

Characteristics of Games

Characteristics of Games PDF

Author: George Skaff Elias

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-12-08

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0262542692

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Understanding games--whether computer games, card games, board games, or sports--by analyzing certain common traits. Characteristics of Games offers a new way to understand games: by focusing on certain traits--including number of players, rules, degrees of luck and skill needed, and reward/effort ratio--and using these characteristics as basic points of comparison and analysis. These issues are often discussed by game players and designers but seldom written about in any formal way. This book fills that gap. By emphasizing these player-centric basic concepts, the book provides a framework for game analysis from the viewpoint of a game designer. The book shows what all genres of games--board games, card games, computer games, and sports--have to teach each other. Today's game designers may find solutions to design problems when they look at classic games that have evolved over years of playing.

Unboxed

Unboxed PDF

Author: Gordon Calleja

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-10-04

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0262370271

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An in-depth exploration of the experience of playing board games and how game designers shape that experience. In Unboxed, Gordon Calleja explores the experience of playing board games and how game designers shape that experience. Calleja examines key aspects of board game experience—the nature of play, attention, rules, sociality, imagination, narrative, materiality, and immersion—to offer a theory of board game experience and a model for understanding game involvement that is relevant to the analysis, criticism, and design of board games. Drawing on interviews with thirty-two leading board game designers and critics, Calleja—himself a board game designer—provides the set of conceptual tools that board game design has thus far lacked. After considering different conceptions of play, Calleja discusses the nature and role of attention and goes on to outline the key forms of involvement that make up the board game playing experience. In subsequent chapters, Calleja explores each of these forms of involvement, considering both the experience itself and the design considerations that bring it into being. Calleja brings this analysis together in a chapter that maps how these forms of involvement come together in the moment of gameplay, and how their combination shapes the flow of player affect. By tracing the processes by which players experience these moments of rule-mediated, imagination-fueled sociality, Calleja helps us understand the richness of the gameplay experience packed into the humble board game box.