Reddit reviews Challenges for Game Designers
We found 29 Reddit comments about Challenges for Game Designers. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Used Book in Good Condition
Reddit reviews Challenges for Game DesignersWe found 29 Reddit comments about Challenges for Game Designers. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
The best high-level advice I've found on how to make a game comes from Magic: The Gathering's head designer, Mark Rosewater, called "10 Things Every Game Needs":
http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/ten-things-every-game-needs-part-1-part-2-2011-12-19
On the more practical side, you might want to look at Brenda Brathwaite's Challenges for Game Designers:
https://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Game-Designers-Brenda-Brathwaite/dp/158450580X
And in terms of local resources, Toronto is somewhat famous for its board game cafes, especially "Snakes and Lattes". You can try out all different kinds of games there:
https://www.snakesandlattes.com/
Hope that helps!
Yeah, you can't just slap a theme on a game though. The game mechanics and the theme need to work off of each other.
I recommend reading some books about game design. These two are both really good:
If you are going the book route, I have a few suggestions for you!
Not sure if he's a reader? Check out Challenges for Game Designers Basically a collection of game problems to solve, flexing those 'be creative within a bounded scenario' muscles that a lot of big dreamers don't have enough experience with.
Another solid choice is this one,
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter). In general it's talking about layouts/formatting, but super solid read for our industry as well.
Both of these are light and fun reads. If you think they might be interested in something heavier, I can post some in that vein as well.
To be clear: are you interested in game programming, or game design? (I say this because the other post said you were interested in engineering, and I'm not sure that guy knew what he was talking about) While the two do go hand-in-hand, what discipline you will be practicing is very important to be aware of. If you are interested in game design (theory behind making games, regardless of whether or not they're electronic) then some books you'd be interested in would be Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design, reinforced by exercises from Challenges for Game Designers.
If you are interested in game programming, that would require some introductory programming knowledge before diving into it, and there are others who would know where to find books for that, like on the sidebar of /r/learnprogramming. I would not recommend diving into a game engine without some basic programming knowledge unless you use an engine like GameMaker (but even that is just putting it off to a degree).
Blaaaaargh quit focusing ideas! Start writing code! Playtest!
/r/gamedev is a heuristic process. You can't just plan out everything and expect to make game from thinking alone. You have to code and then playtest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYXInr3N5UQ&t=3s
This talk is "Going with the grain", comparing gamedev to cutting wood. It helps to go with the grain of what your medium (computer, input methods) are good at. Work with yourself.
Try treating your game as an intelligent artifact eg. https://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart-Attributes/dp/0201626950/ . Let your programming be a dialogue with it and see what it wants to say.
If you're still having trouble and feeling stuck in "idea mode", put the programming aside and try "Challenges for Game Designers: non-digital exercises for video game designers" https://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Game-Designers-Brenda-Brathwaite/dp/158450580X/ making board games built around mechanics like "Exploration" or "Randomness" or "Deduction".
TL;DR Execution is everything so start writing code and play your game.
Run through the exercises in this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/158450580X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1411126640&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40. They are all non-digital games, but that's they best way to start to understand how to design games. Each chapter goes over some key concepts and then presents challenges that enforce them.
Challenges for Games Designers is a book I regularly recommend when people ask me for a book.
Otherwise it's just lots of work, Games Design is like a muscle it gets easier and stronger through use.
This course is just intended to be introductory, so yes, there's plenty of things to learn after this first step.
The most important goal is to figure out how you can keep practicing, and for that you need to be able to share and discuss your work with others. If you manage to find local game designers while taking this course (e.g. fellow participants of 11.126x) the next step might be to start a project with them. I also love game jams, which are like game hackathons. The Global Game Jam happens every year in late January, and if making a game in 48 hours sounds appealing to you, it's a good challenge.
There are quite a lot of good books I'd recommend. Challenges for Game Designers (Brathwaite/Romero & Schrieber) is probably a good second step after our class, especially if you're focusing on card/board game design. If you're looking for reading that's focused on more digital design, look at Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton.
Also, I have a whole lot of classes on MIT's other online courseware site, OpenCourseWare! Just search for "Philip Tan".
I've just started reading Challenges for Game Designers. It comes highly recommended.
I would also suggest looking into Cheapass Games and their theories on design, which are largely about reusing components common to all games.
Challenges for game designers is a highly recommended book, although it is not designed to be used with kids. Might have good exercise ideas, though.
Edit: also, will there be time to play games? Playing some simple games and breaking down the mechanics involved, like deduction, set collection, drafting, etc, could really be illuminating.
Here's some stuff to check out..
Challenges for Game Designers- https://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Game-Designers-Brenda-Brathwaite/dp/158450580X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469790243&sr=8-1&keywords=challenges+for+game+designers - A good overview and tool for learning various gameplay mechanics..
Level Up: the Guide to Great Video Game Design - https://www.amazon.com/Level-Guide-Great-Video-Design/dp/1118877160/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469790273&sr=8-1&keywords=level+up+video+game+design - A nice overview of game design in general, which is good to know even if you're only pursuing level design at the moment
Game Maker's Toolkit - https://www.youtube.com/user/McBacon1337/videos - A really good series on game and level design
Reverse Design Series - http://thegamedesignforum.com/books/books.html - Books that deconstruct games in order to learn from them.. I'm going through the Super Mario World one right now and learning some nice things from it..
Some Reddit posts..
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/comments/35rvec/puzzle_design_how_i_do_it/ - I found this helpful back when I first read it.. o.o;
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/4remqy/a_fast_and_simple_method_for_writing_compelling/ - Nice stuff to keep in mind when designing story flow in levels..
Deviating a bit here.. but..
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/23oxp6/build_a_bad_guy_workshop_designing_enemies_for/ - A nice breakdown of enemy types in mostly 2D platform style games.. but a good reference
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/3p3z05/game_feel_why_your_death_animation_sucks/ - Some game feel videos
Checkout Challenges for Game Designers.
If you want to be a game designer, just first accept that you're training for a marathon not a sprint.
Start with small exercises, not a full game just, like, quick sketches of game mechanics or ideas.
Do lots of tutorials, like "how to make a shmup in [whatever game engine]" and then when you finish the tutorial just add one or two things to make it your own, then move on to another tutorial.
After a few of those, start participating in 48 hour game jams.
There's a site I participated in for a bit called 1 Game a Month in which the idea was simply to finish one game a month. Not a masterpiece every month, just something finished every month.
It really is worth it to invest time in learning how to actually finish a project as opposed to always thinking about finishing it.
I recommend reading the following short articles:
The Chemistry of Game Design
Understanding Challenge
And I recommend the following books, not necessarily to read cover to cover but to read until the content doesn't seem to interest you, then just kinda skip around to the interesting bits:
Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Braithwaite
The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell
And finally I recommend reading this book from cover to cover:
A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster
Sounds like a fun idea! Some friends and I have been getting together and designing and playing our own games lately for our weekly gaming nights. I'll try and recruit them as well. :)
There's this great book called "Challenges for Game Designers" that might be fun, if you're looking for more inspiration. (though what you've got already is fantastic.) Each chapter in the book discusses a different game design problem, (pacing, puzzles, randomness, etc.) and there are challenges at the end of each section where you create a tabletop game, or at least a design document, detailing how you would make a game that addresses the problem. Anyway, love that book and wanted to mention it, ;-P
Looking forward to seeing where this goes!
Challenges for game designers is excellent. The real meat of the book is the set of excercises and projects, with a lot of excellent information and discussion to back it up.
Not directly related to game design, but these days nobody has an excuse not to have read the art of war. There are many free versions of it out there, including an audiobook. Check its wiki page!
Cool.
actually i tried about 5 engines , and construct 2 is easiest and fastest one.
and there is some tutorials on card game also:
https://www.google.com/search?q=construct2+card+game&rlz=1C1GCEA_enIR764IR764&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiHm_yz3_XZAhVn74MKHaCqDHIQ_AUICigB&biw=1366&bih=637
actually it's better to design and prototype card games in paper and cards, even if it's too fancy, you can make a simplified version with cards.
i read some chapteres of this book and it was amazing, read it if you had time.
https://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Game-Designers-Brenda-Brathwaite/dp/158450580X
good luck :D
TL;DR: Prototype and test your game idea, don't worry about art all for a long time, do not get into game design because you think you'll be able to make a career out of it
I've picked up game design over the last six months and have really been enjoying it, and while I'm not looking for a partner I can give you some pointers to start. I'll try to deconstruct some of what you're saying because I think you're making some incorrect assumptions about game design and how to do it. I think some of this is going to sound cold or mean, but I don't intend it to be. I just want you to go in with realistic expectations, and if you can accept that I'm finding game design to be a lot of fun.
First, think about is why you want to make games. You seem to be trying to use a project as a jumping off point to design games professionally. Honestly, at least as far as board games go, there really isn't much money in designing games for most people. Sure there are a few people who design board games professionally but for most, if you make any money at it, it'll be like a second job. If designing board games is something you want to do, it should be something you do for the joy of designing board games in and of itself, not because it sounds like a cool profession.
Personally, I think everyone who is passionate about board games should try designing their own games, but they need to go into it knowing that they're designing board games because they enjoy the creative process, not because they'll make a living at it. I love the perpetual puzzle of game design and having something in my head manifest itself in the form of paper, cardboard, dice and bits.
Second, how to actually start designing games. You talk about wanting to make a "finished" game. I think what you mean is you want to see a game design taken from beginning to end. Designing any type of game is what's called an iterative design process. If you don't know that means you take your game idea, you make a prototype of it, test it out, realize it's awful but maybe find some gems that are fun, refine it, make a new prototype, rinse and repeat. These first prototypes should be rough. For example, I'm working on a dungeon-crawler card game and my "cards" are just pieces of paper cut up with my text on them and then put in card sleeves with poker cards as a backing. Art is something that should come towards the end of the process because you'll be making so many changes this early in the design process that getting someone to do art would be a waste of time (and probably money).
Eventually, when you think your game is at a stage where it's kind of fun is when you start playtesting with other people. Get people together, have them try your game design and see what they think. If they're friends, tell them to be honest. Realize that they'll point out things you didn't think of and they'll hate bits of your game that you love and it'll feel like getting gut checked. Like I said I'm fairly new to game design, but from what I've heard from professional game designers and from my local game design group, that feeling never goes away. When your baby starts getting torn apart it's one of the worst feelings in the world, but it has to be done to make something better.
The reason you go through all of this is no matter how good you think your game idea is, it definitely won't be good when it first goes from your mind to the paper. It probably still won't be particularly good after you've improved it several times, but hopefully you'll see something good and be able to combine those good bits to make something really enjoyable. If you see no hope in it maybe to shelve it for later and try something else.
Third, you brought up working with an artist to talk about the look of your game and coming up with lore and such. This is something you really shouldn't even worry about until you have a game prototype that's starting to near the final stages. When you're at the point you feel the game is ready for what's called blind playtesting, which is when you feel your game is ready to be tested by complete strangers.
Below I've linked a few videos and a podcast I hope you'll find useful.
One Thousand XP's Board Game Design Time Playlist - It's a small video series discussing different aspects of board game design
The Dice Tower's Top 10 Tips for Game Designers - Some great tips on designing board games that covers some of what I posted here and more
The Game Design Roundtable Podcast - They interview people about how they designed their games and have regular audience Q&A episodes. I think it's enjoyable for anyone who enjoys games (they focus mainly on board games but also do some video game stuff) and essential for anyone just getting started in game design
I've also started going through the book "Challenges for Game Designers" which has chapters talking about different aspects of both board and video game design and at the end of each chapter are challenges for making board games based on the material covered in that chapter.
Finally, I want to reiterate something I said previously. Don't get into board game design thinking you're going to make a career out of it. Maybe someday you'll become the next Alan Moon, Friedemann Friese, Donald X. or Reiner Knizia, but even if you do it'll be a long road before you get there.
When people bring up wanting to get into game design because they're passionate about games and want to make a living doing it I relate the attitude of my dad. As much as I love him, every hobby he's ever been interested in goes in these steps. First, he says, "This looks really cool I'd love to do that." Second, he says, "If I get good enough I could make money at this." Then he tries whatever it is he's interested, realizes he's not good enough out the gate to sell it and gives up. He's 60 years old and has been having a hard time the last couple of years because the closest thing he has to a rewarding hobby is playing Hearts and Spades on his laptop. The problem is he never sticks with a hobby long enough to actually get good and enjoy it because his aim was to try and do something he could sell.
If you get nothing else out of this post I hope this is what sticks with. Make games because you love making games, don't make games to make money. One day your dream might come true and you might be able to design games for a living, but that shouldn't be your primary goal.
This is coming from a student in the game design program at DigiPen, a game development college where the teams behind Portal and Portal 2 both graduated.
Start by introducing yourself to game history. Learn about the different types of game families: racetrack games, war games, positional games, mancala games, dice games, card games. There are thousands of different non-digital games and you should start getting to know them.
I recommend Board and Table Games by R.C. Bell as a handy guide. http://www.amazon.com/Board-Table-Games-Many-Civilizations/dp/0486238555
Learn the mechanics of paper games. A board game is essentially a level in a digital game. Card games are about information. Learn about the probability curves used in dice games. And above all, design games. When you design games, ask yourself WTF: What's this for? If it's useless or adds nothing, scrap it. Never be afraid to kill a rule or even an entire idea if it's not working right. In the industry, they refer to this as being able to kill your baby.
Some great books on design:
Challenges for Game Designers
An excellent read and it has a ton of great exercises for non-digital design.
http://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Game-Designers-Brenda-Brathwaite/dp/158450580X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300163628&sr=1-1
Game Design Workshop
Another great read.
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Workshop-Second-Playcentric/dp/0240809742/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1300163687&sr=1-1
If you're young enough to be in public school, why not try out DigiPen's K-12 Game Design summer program?
https://projectfun.digipen.edu/workshops/courses/game-design/
RPG Maker is a good start, but don't get stuck with it. Try out GameMaker, Unreal Engine, Unity3D, Flash and ActionScript 3.0. You'll need to be able to code or at least script if you want any chance in the industry.
WATCH THIS VIDEO! http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2443-So-You-Want-to-be-a-Game-Designer It is paramount to what it means to be a designer.
Buy Challenges for Game Designers or Game Design Workshop, Second Edition. Or both. Do the stuff in them. Basically, both of these books teach you to actually design games, instead of programming, by designing in pen&paper first. It's a good approach.
A few other books there are also a good read for you guys.
You should check out the book Challenges for Game Designers: non-digital exercises for video game designers. I know it says it's for video game designers, but! note that it is non-digital exercises: The vast majority of the exercises are actually board game exercises. Plus, they stress that video game design and board game design has a lot in common. Really, there is plenty in the book for both. As the title suggests it focuses on giving the reader practical experience, each chapter has a short introduction to some game design term or concept, and then a bunch of exercises in the end, which are usually an exercise in creating a game prototype in a certain genre, using a certain mechanic, or whatnot. Here's a link to the amazon.com product page in case you want to look a bit in the book, or order it.
A few of the places in the book really target video game design, from a quick re-skimming of the books chapters: talking about multiplatform, talking about designing UI (Though, I think you could take this as a lesson in designing "UI" on game boards: trackers on the board, and personal player boards), and talking about social networks.
Sounds like the challenge that you are having is getting hung up on the technological aspect, which I would bet is incredibly common among aspiring designers. Game design transcends medium. Technology simply enables game play from design. To provide a chance-driven strategic experience, any number of tools can be used: dice, cards, computer, or even just a drop of water and an angled surface. For simulating fast paced combat, a computer provides a number of advantages, but many prefer to use inflatable barriers and paintball markers instead.
Check out Challenges for Designers. It is a practical guide to game design strategies for video game designers, but utilizing non-digital means. It forces you to consider what actually makes a game fun, interesting, or challenging, without getting caught up in rendering engines, input methods, or the myriad other technical considerations that you, as a designer, won't actually have direct control over on a reasonably large game team anyway.
Once you have cohesive ideas about exactly what you want to see in a gaming experience, I think that you'll find learning the how to be a hell of a lot easier. Then you won't just be sitting at the keyboard trying to "design a level," you will be creating the specific player experience that you envision, which will define what tools to use and provide guidance on what questions to ask the pertinent communities for those tools.
When all else fails, build a Tetris clone. :) And no, that's not a joke.
https://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Game-Designers-Brenda-Brathwaite/dp/158450580X
Can't recommend this book highly enough, but to be honest you need to be in a group of people to get the most out of it. I basically built my introductory game design class on it. Great introduction and practice for game design.
Why not set yourself some challenges and see if you can stick to them? Constraining components can be a great way to spur creativity. For example, create some aspect of your everyday life as a game, but you can only include 20 cards. Next challenge restrict yourself to 10 cards. Then no cards.
Alternatively, maybe try this book? I have it on my bookshelf but have never opened it... https://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Game-Designers-Brenda-Brathwaite/dp/158450580X
Following a problem from a book of game design challenges (this one for those curious), I'm starting a WWII era RPG based on the Brothers in Arms video game series. Game play has a focus on combat (is that bad for an RPG?) so I'm currently working out the details.
The intention is for it to be used in a classroom setting with high school students, which means rules need to be simple and easy to learn. This has proved to be quite the challenge to maintain interesting combat mechanics inspired by the core mechanics of the series, while keeping rolls to a D6 and math to a minimum. Feel pretty excited about it though!
I think that's a hard enough question even when targeting the general population within that age group. So it can be difficult to find well researched and experientially backed up information even without the more specific target of children with autism. Though I'll also note (as someone with a degree of autism himself), depending on the individual's particular autistic attributes, the condition can actually be a strength for studying something such as game design. The focus on designing rules and working out all the implications for their effects on the gameplay experience can often be a natural fit for someone with autism. At least in my case, the key for effective learning was to grant me the time, space, and tools to explore a subject in my own idiosyncratic way, at which point I could soak up all sorts of knowledge and concepts.
As for concrete recommendations, the one that comes to my mind is to look outside of computers for at least part of your teaching material and activities. I wasn't expecting it initially, but while reading a variety of game design books to improve my own knowledge for making video games, I repeatedly encountered the recommendation to do as much of your early prototyping away from the computer as possible. That is, design board games, card games, sports-like games, party games, and so on. In many cases, you can pull ideas from a variety of game types to build hybrids that do a decent job of replicating the essence of certain video game mechanics, giving you a chance to evaluate how fun the concept is, and if it merits spending time to make a more in depth digital version.
Best of all, it can be free or very cheap, it requires no knowledge of coding, you can do it anywhere (though preferably with a good work table and some craft supplies and standard physical gaming equipment), and you can get results in just a few hours, or maybe even a few minutes depending on the concept. Anything using a standard deck of 52 cards is particularly simple to test, for example.
Two of the books I've already read that had sections helping me think in these terms were:
Challenges for Game Designers is also on my backlog to read and looks very good for this sort of non-digital focus for learning skills that will ultimately be applicable to making digital games.
Brenda Braithwaite (Romero) wrote an entire book on this.
Challenges for Game Designers https://www.amazon.com/dp/158450580X/
Challenges for Game Designers is full of non-digital game design exercises. One of the authors, Ian Schreiber, put together an accompanying free online class/blog.
For my class we have challenges for game designers
It's a decent enough book but not the best it is great though because of the exercises is gives for different game types
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Game-Design-Book-Lenses/dp/0123694965
https://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Workshop-Playcentric-Innovative/dp/0240809742
https://www.amazon.com/Challenges-Game-Designers-Brenda-Brathwaite/dp/158450580X
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQvWMdWhFCc