Challenges for Game Designers: Brenda Brathwaite, Ian Schreiber

Challenges for Game Designers: Brenda Brathwaite, Ian Schreiber

Charles River Media | ISBN: 158450580X | 2008-08-21 | PDF (OCR) | 317 pages | 2.03 Mb

Welcome to a book written to challenge you, improve your brainstorming abilities, and sharpen your game design skills! Challenges for Game Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers is filled with enjoyable, interesting, and challenging exercises to help you become a better video game designer, whether you are a professional or aspire to be. Each chapter covers a different topic important to game designers, and was taken from actual industry experience. After a brief overview of the topic, there are five challenges that each take less than two hours and allow you to apply the material, explore the topic, and expand your knowledge in that area. Each chapter also includes 10 `non-digital shorts' to further hone your skills. None of the challenges in the book require any programming or a computer, but many of the topics feature challenges that can be made into fully functioning games. The book is useful for professional designers, aspiring designers, and instructors who teach game design courses, and the challenges are great for both practice and homework assignments. The book can be worked through chapter by chapter, or you can skip around and do only the challenges that interest you. As with anything else, making great games takes practice and Challenges for Game Designers provides you with a collection of fun, thoughtprovoking, and of course, challenging activities that will help you hone vital skills and become the best game designer you can be.

Review:

Finally! A book that talks about HOW to become a good game designer instead of merely addressing WHAT game design is. Most of the game design textbooks I've read taught me a bunch of academic buzz words (ludology, emergent game play, etc.), but they didn't leave much in the way of practical application. Brathwaite and Schreiber cap each chapter with a series of game design challenges that let the reader put their new knowledge to the test with good old pen and paper.

I found these challenges really helpful. In fact, they got me in the right mindset for taking design tests with game companies. After interviewing with one company, I was asked to take their design test. Thanks to Challenges, I was comfortable working under all sorts of real-world constraints, from genre-specific/technological limitations to IP restraints. The company liked my test and invited me to more interviews! So as an aspiring game designer, I extend my highest recommendation for this book to those looking to expand their design portfolio and prepare themselves for breaking into the game industry.

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