Patterns in Game Design provides professional and aspiring game designers with a collection of practical design choices that are possible in all types of games. These choices, called patterns, are used to illustrate the varying types of gameplay found in games. For the purposes of this book, gameplay is defined as the structures of player interaction with the game system and interaction with other players. This includes the possibilities, results, and reasons for players to play. By putting these elements of gameplay into practical patterns, designers have access to a common set of concepts that can be used by all developers, allowing game projects to be approached with more standard tools. These patterns help designers put their concepts and ideas into words, which makes communication between members much easier. The patterns also help with making design choices, understanding how other games work, and inspiring game ideas. The book itself is divided into two main parts. The first part covers the theoretical aspects of describing games and defining the template used to develop the game design patterns. The second part includes the actual patterns divided into chapters based on the aspect of gameplay they cover. The patterns can be used in any order and referenced as you would a dictionary. By studying these various game design patterns, designers learn about the choices they?ll have to make when using a pattern in their own designs, and they?ll gain an understanding of what gameplay is, so that they can design better games.

"Patterns in Game Design is that rare sort of book on game design: a useful one. Readers will find their understanding of games, and designers their toolbox, expanded by exposure to a wide variety of game design techniques, some of which they may not have been previously aware." —Greg Costikyan Eminent game designer of Paranoia and member of the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame

Patterns in Game Design provides professional and aspiring game designers with a collection of practical design choices that are possible in all types of games. These choices, called patterns, are used to illustrate the varying types of gameplay found in games. For the purposes of this book, gameplay is defined as the structures of player interaction with the game system and interaction with other players. This includes the possibilities, results, and reasons for players to play. By putting these elements of gameplay into practical patterns, designers have access to a common set of concepts that can be used by all developers, allowing game projects to be approached with more standard tools. These patterns help designers put their concepts and ideas into words, which makes communication between members much easier. The patterns also help with making design choices, understanding how other games work, and inspiring game ideas. The book itself is divided into two main parts. The first part covers the theoretical aspects of describing games and defining the template used to develop the game design patterns. The second part includes the actual patterns divided into chapters based on the aspect of gameplay they cover. The patterns can be used in any order and referenced as you would a dictionary. By studying these various game design patterns, designers learn about the choices they’ll have to make when using a pattern in their own designs, and they’ll gain an understanding of what gameplay is, so that they can design better games.

KEY FEATURES
* Provides a practical collection of game design patterns that facilitate any type of game design
* Defines a common language designers can use to talk concisely about the essence of games
* Teaches the basic concepts of gameplay through the study of design patterns
* Includes ready-to-use, customizable patterns
* Emphasizes design methodology as a style that is independent of the technology covered
* Includes a CD-ROM with an easy-to-use collection of patterns from the book (200+ total), slides for a series of introductory lectures, and PDF versions of the patterns in quick card form

On the CD!
* Game Design Pattern Collection - Includes over 200 patterns from the book in HTML-format, cross-referenced for easy searching by chapter or alphabetically using a standard Web browser
* Pattern Cards - Includes PDF versions of the patterns with concise pattern descriptions that can be printed as individual cards. These short descriptions are designed to be used as reminders and pointers to the full descriptions
* Presentation Slides - Includes a set of PowerPoint™ slides using the patterns as a teaching tool for workshops, lectures, etc.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
WINDOWS 95/98/ NT/2000, Pentium Processor+, CD/ hard drive, 32MB RAM; MAC OS 7.61+, PowerPC+, CD / hard drive 32MB RAM, or any other similar system which can run the required programs.

Listing of common sense

This book misleadingly indicates that there are well documented ways of solving problems in game design. I wasted my money on this book thinking it would provide some insight to the structure and programming patterns used in game programming.

This book does a good job of summing up all that is wrong with the game industry, in that game designers rarely look outside the box and come up with anything that really strays off the path of mainstream.

The original concept of design patterns is to elegantly solve a common problem in programming which is productive to all developers. But for game designers to do the same thing will result in more clones of the same games.

I dont think any comparison should be drawn between Gang Of Four design patterns and what is attempted here.

Boring to read but useful

This book is boring for 2 reasons:



1. It is highly academic, thus the text is highly extensive analytical (to a point were non academics say: get to the point man, stop overanalysing it. Lots of definitions of definitions. So heavy stuff.)



2. It is a list of a lot of game patterns that are used in games. Well lists are boring to read. It is allmost as if you are reading a manual or a dictionary or so.



But.....



as a gamedesigner i found the patterns quite useful. It helps you to get new ideas, to screen a game idea and to judge weak spots in your design. And I mean concepts here not graphical game design. Now I have to figure out how I get this book read, it is so extensive. Bit by bit I guess.



www.wouterbaars.net

www.gamesmaken.startpagina.nl

Boring to read but useful

This book is boring for 2 reasons:

1. It is highly academic, thus the text is highly extensive analytical (to a point were non academics say: get to the point man, stop overanalysing it. Lots of definitions of definitions. So heavy stuff.)

2. It is a list of a lot of game patterns that are used in games. Well lists are boring to read. It is allmost as if you are reading a manual or a dictionary or so.

But.....

as a gamedesigner i found the patterns quite useful. It helps you to get new ideas, to screen a game idea and to judge weak spots in your design. And I mean concepts here not graphical game design. Now I have to figure out how I get this book read, it is so extensive. Bit by bit I guess.

www.wouterbaars.net
www.gamesmaken.startpagina.nl

Not at all a pattern language, but rather an excellent lexicon

Despite the title, this book isn’t a book of game design patterns. Patterns are best practices, designed to solve particular design problems. The "patterns" in this book are nothing of the sort--some of them aren’t even positives, but negatives.

However, I still feel that this book deserves 4 stars, since what it *is* is a lexicon. And a very thorough lexicon, at that. So hey, take it for what it is, not what they claim it to be.

This is NOT a design patterns book.

I bought this book in part because I believed it would be the game programming equivalent of the famous Gang of Four "Design Patterns" book. This is nowhere near the case; nowhere in this book is there any mention of how games might actually be structured or organized at the code or object level. Patterns in Game Design is nothing more than a dictionary of features appearing in games.

Examples are "patterns" such as ’Identification’ which is basically defined as players identifying with aspects of the game.
Games can have "Alliances" or the potential for "Betrayal" and the authors do not say much more than any common sense person could deduce about such features in a game.

Anyone with even a modicum of experience in the gaming world has no real use for this list of game-possible-features. These possibilities are understood implicitly by anyone who has ever played even a small number of modern computer games.

At best this book might galvanize the imaginations of someone who has no idea what their game should do.

Skip it..

This book is so bad, that it would been a crime to not warn the buyers to not waste their money like I did.
It is nothing more than an English dictionary of terms used in games... like what means "Avatar".. or what means "High Score List"..

classifies existing and future games

The authors are attempting to do for game design what the Gang of Four and Martin Fowler did for the use of patterns in coding. While other books on game design have gone into various aspects specific to games, few have hitherto tried to generalise. Which is the essence of this book.

You can take the patterns it provides as conceptual classifications for understanding the structure of existing games. For this alone, it is quite useful. But the reader is probably more interested in the next step. Applying these patterns to the design of new games. By imposing the structure of a pattern, you [which includes a team of programmers] may be able to better layout the code in a robust fashion.