Ernest Adams - Fundamentals of Game Design

FUNDAMENTALS OF GAME DESIGN, SECOND EDITION
Ernest Adams

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Senior Editor: Karyn Johnson
Development Editor: Robyn Thomas
Production Editor: Cory Borman
Copy Editor: Rebecca Rider
Technical Editor: Christopher Weaver
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Indexer: Jack Lewis
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ISBN-13: 978-0-321-64337-7
ISBN-10: 0-321-64337-2

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed and bound in the United States of America

In this updated edition of Fundamentals of Game Design , Adams adds much to what was already a thorough look at game design in all its varieties. The result is a veritable feast of design lessons sure not only to satisfy the budding designers appetite, but also to refine her palate.

Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology

In Fundamentals of Game Design, Second Edition , Ernest Adams provides encyclopedic coverage of process and design issues for every aspect of game design, expressed as practical lessons that can be immediately applied to a design in-progress. He offers the best framework Ive seen for thinking about the relationships between core mechanics, gameplay, and playerone that Ive found useful for both teaching and research.

Michael Mateas, University of California at Santa Cruz, co-creator of Faade

Ernest writes in a way that is very down to earth and approachable to students. It is obvious that he has been there and done that and his real-world, unpretentious approach to the material is what makes this text so accessible.

Andrew Phelps, Rochester Institute of Technology

To Mary Ellen Foley, for love and wisdom.
Omnia vincit amor.

It would be a rare developer indeed who had worked on every genre and style of game addressed in this book, and certainly I cannot make that claim. When it came time to speak about subjects of which I had little direct experience, I relied heavily on the advice and wisdom of my professional colleagues. I owe a special debt of gratitude to:

Monty Clark

Jesyca Durchin

Joseph Ganetakos

Scott Kim

Rick Knowles

Raph Koster

Mike Lopez

Steve Meretzky

Carolyn Handler Miller

Brian Moriarty

Tess Snider

Chris Taylor

Michelle Hinn and the

IGDA Accessibility Special

Interest Group

I hasten to add that any errors in the book are mine and not theirs. I am also especially indebted to MobyGames (www.mobygames.com) whose vast database of PC and console games I consulted daily, and sometimes hourly, in my research.

My technical reviewer, Chris Weaver, provided advice and feedback throughout the book. I cannot express the value to me of his experience as a game designer, game industry entrepreneur, and professor at MIT. A number of my colleagues offered valuable suggestions about different parts of the manuscript; I am particularly grateful to Chris Bateman, Ben Cousins, Melissa Federoff, Ola Holmdahl, and Lucy Joyner for their advice.

Several people and institutions generously gave me permission to reproduce images:

MobyGames (www.mobygames.com)

Giant Bomb (www.giantbomb.com)

Bjrn Hurri (www.bjornhurri.com)

Cecropia, Inc. (www.cecropia.com)

Pseudo Interactive (www.pseudointeractive.com)

Chronic Logic (www.chroniclogic.com) and Auran (www.auran.com)

Finally, no list of acknowledgments would be complete without recognizing the help of my editors. Robyn Thomas worked hard with me to get the book done under severe deadline pressure, and Mary Ellen Foley, The Word Boffin (www.wordboffin.com), offered valuable insights and editing assistance. Im also grateful for the assistance of Margot Hutchison, my agent at Waterside Productions, in helping to finalize the contract.

Suggestions, corrections, and even complaints are always welcome; please send them to .

Ernest Adams is an American game design consultant and trainer currently working in England with the International Hobo game design group. In addition to his consulting work, he gives game design workshops and is a popular speaker at conferences and on college campuses. He has worked in the interactive entertainment industry since 1989, and he founded the International Game Developers Association in 1994. He was most recently employed as a lead designer at Bullfrog Productions, and for several years before that he was the audio/video producer on the Madden NFL line of football games at Electronic Arts. In his early career, he was a software engineer, and he has developed online, computer, and console games for machines from the IBM 360 mainframe to the present day. He is the author of three other books and the Designers Notebook series of columns on the Gamasutra developers webzine. His professional web site is at www.designersnotebook.com.

Christopher Weaver founded Bethesda Softworks, the software entertainment company credited with the development of physics-based sports sims, including the original John Madden Football for Electronic Arts, as well as the Elder Scrolls role- playing series. A former member of the Architecture Machine Group and Fellow of the MIT Communications and Policy Program, he is currently a Board Member of the Communications Technology Roadmap and Visiting Scientist in MITs Microphotonics Center. Weaver is CEO of Media Technology, Ltd. and teaches part time in the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. In 2005, he was inducted into the Cosmos Club for Excellence in Engineering.

Welcome to Fundamentals of Game Design, Second Editionan updated version of the original Fundamentals of Game Design, which was itself based upon an earlier book called Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design. I hope you enjoy this book and find it both informative and helpful.

In the past three years, the field of interactive entertainment has changed in a number of ways, and I felt it was time to update the book to reflect them. Most significant among these changes has been the arrival of the Nintendo Wii with its motion-sensitive controller; the Apple iPhone with its multitouch screen; the huge success of