Kevin Saunders is a senior designer at Obsidian Entertainment. Previously he was lead designer and producer of Shattered Galaxy, which swept the 2001 Independent Games Festival and was recognized by GameSpot as the Most Innovative Game of the year. Kevin has worked as a designer on Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, Far Cry, Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour, Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth, Knights of the Old Republic 2, and Neverwinter Nights 2. Jeannie Novak is lead author and series editor of Thomson?s Game Development Essentials series. Through Indiespace, an interactive entertainment company she founded in 1994, Jeannie consults with creative professionals in the music, film, and television industries to help them migrate to the game industry. Novak is a game instructor and course development expert at the Art Institute Online, UCLA Extension, Art Center College of Design, Academy of Entertainment and Technology at Santa Monica College, DeVry University, and Westwood College.

It’s not about design

This is very colourful, well written, structured and history extensive book.

But within those 271 pages only last 16 are about design. Other 255 feed you with obvious information well known to any gamer.

Such book might be great for some artists who never played any computer or console games. Everybody else should keep away from it.

Very good resource

This is an excellent book. For those of us one and two-man programming operations as hobbyist programmers, we don’t always have the artistic skill or aesthetic intuition to just whip up a GUI. This book explains concepts behind an interface SPECIFICALLY FOR GAMES. THIS is what I found awesome. All the books and articles I’ve looked up have been for interface design FOR WEBSITES, or stupid, dry, tasteless business-app type programs. This book focuses on game interface design ONLY.

It cites examples of interfaces in games you’ve played most likely, from the ancient consoles and computers of yesteryear (Atari 2600, colecovision, intellivision, commodore 64) to the more modern consoles (PS, Dreamcast, N64, PS2) and cites examples of what makes a good interface and a bad interface.

They make some good points too, such as interface design for the disabled. (This cool example they gave was for a healthbar that only changed color. What happens if the player was color blind? If the bar went from green to red, the color blind user would have nothing to gauge his health by; so they reccomended making the bar shorten, and/or change color.)

THERE IS NO SOURCE CODE. This book only focuses on concepts and design ideas. Its nice and abstract. It’s made to push push push the ideas into your head, even if it is a bit repetitive.

Bottom line is, if you’re already Joe Game Programmer for a big company, don’t buy this book. Have your art department and UI design team make your game interface for you.

If you’re like me, a hobbyist programmer of a small team with dreams of making it big someday, GRAB THIS BOOK. The more resources you can get, the better.

This book doesn’t disappoint.

Get it.

Now.

Light introduction, nothing of real substance

This book is written for people who have never played computer games, have no ideas what computer games are, and want to catch up with the rest of the world.

It contains no real substance and offers nothing in the way of real insights for people who are looking to learn more about game interface design.

Overall, quite disappointing.

Great basic game design interface info

I found this book to be a great resource for anyone starting out in game design. It covers all the essentials, from the very first console games of the early 1980’s to today’s complex MMOG’s. You’re going to think differently about the basic interface elements you take for granted. I also enjoyed the comments from real people in the game industry. Great graphics, too! This is a great buy, whether it’s for a class or just your own library.

If you like interface design, this book is great.

I had to order this book for a class, but i do love the series anyway. The book is filled with comments and examples from professionals in the game industry as well as opinions from game design students (which aren’t actually as informative or helpful at all. After a while you’ll probably just skip over those as there are lots of them and they aren’t too interesting) There are lots of pictures so you can see the different interfaces games have had over the years, and it’s got current information as of today. There are sections about early games, but there are also sections about the "next gen" consoles, 360, ps3, and wii. If you’re into interface design, it’s a nice book.

Appalling

I’m deeply disappointed. I’ve been working in the games industry for a few years now, so I’ve read quite a few books about game development and, I must say, this one takes the prize for worst book in the industry by a landslide. Absolutely awful.

The information contained in this book is irrelevant, aggravatingly repetitive, dead obvious and hardly pedagogic. The actual, useful information about user interface design in this book could easily fit in a napkin, so 271 pages of ranting, countless students’ opinions and the history of consoles, hardware and whatnot feel like nothing more than fluffy fillers to a book that should have never been published due to lack of material.

CONCLUSION: If you’re looking to learn anything about UI design, this book is most definitely not for you. If you’re looking to be reminded about the most evident things common sense could possibly dictate, then by all means, go ahead and get it.