Patterns On Game Design

'Patterns In Game Design' provides professional and aspiring game designers with the tools they need to really understand how games are made. It provides designers with a method for discussing and understanding an essential part of game design: game play. Game play is critical to a game's success but has received little attention, because it varies from game to game and is difficult to understand. To facilitate the understanding of game play, this book provides a "language" to describe and discuss it - game design patterns. By providing a common set of concepts that can be used by all developers, every game project can be approached with standard tools. There are three main purposes for using the patterns: creation of game concepts, problem-solving during design, and analysis of games. Each pattern describes a part of the interaction possible in games, including a description of each pattern and how it relates to other patterns. In addition, designers learn about the choices that have to be made when using a pattern in their own designs. Although game designers do not directly design game play, by studying the various game design patterns provided throughout the book, they will gain a thorough understanding of what game play is and how to design better games.