LudoScience

Game Design (design)

Author(s) : Andrew Rollings, David Morris
Editor : New Riders
Publication date : 10-17-2003
Language : english

This 900-pages behemoth is the revised and extended edition of a book first published in 2000. It covers extensively the industrial creation of video games. The book is divided in three main parts: the design of games, project and team management, and video game software architecture design. In the first part, the authors address topics that will become the classic parts of "game design" books: game concept ideas, writing Game Design Documents, balancing, user interface, prototyping... These topics are shaped as the different steps of the design methodology built by the authors. The second part focuses on the day-to-day life of a game studio: managing the various members (and personalities) of a team, setting up industrial processes coming from other computer engineering sectors... The last part is suited for programmers, and deals with more technical topics: the various game development methods, the design of a software architecture from a Game Design Document, choosing a technology... The whole book is enriched with many "real-world" examples that greatly illustrates the ideas of the book. By-the-way, they also provide us with a snapshot of the state of the US video game industry in the early 2000's. Overall, this book has aged quite well, and it still remains an excellent guide to the professional video game creation.