George Skaff Elias, Richard Garfield, K. Robert Gutschera

Characteristics of Games (eBook, ePUB)

Illustrator: Whitley, Peter

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Understanding games—whether computer games, card games, board games, or sports—by analyzing certain common traits.

Characteristics of Games offers a new way to understand games: by focusing on certain traits—including number of players, rules, degrees of luck and skill needed, and reward/effort ratio—and using these characteristics as basic points of comparison and analysis. These issues are often discussed by game players and designers but seldom written about in any formal way. This book fills that gap. By emphasizing these player-centric basic concepts, the book provides a framework for game analysis from the viewpoint of a game designer. The book shows what all genres of games—board games, card games, computer games, and sports—have to teach each other. Today's game designers may find solutions to design problems when they look at classic games that have evolved over years of playing.

Characteristics of Games—written by three of the most prominent game designers working today—will serve as an essential reference for game designers and game players curious about the inner workings of games. It includes exercises (which can also serve as the basis for discussions) and examples chosen from a wide variety of games. There are occasional mathematical digressions, but these can be skipped with no loss of continuity. Appendixes offer supplementary material, including a brief survey of the two main branches of mathematical game theory and a descriptive listing of each game referred to in the text.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: MIT Press
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. August 2012
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780262300445
• Artikelnr.: 60026232

Autorenporträt

Skaff Elias is Vice President of Three Donkeys LLC, a game design, development, and consulting company. Richard Garfield, mathematics professor and game designer, is the creator of many card games, including Magic: The Gathering, as well as the board game RoboRally. K. Robert Gutschera is Lead Designer at Secret Identity Studios. Eric Zimmerman is a game designer, game design theorist, and co-founder and CEO of gameLab. He has taught at universities including MIT, the University of Texas, Parsons School of Design, New York University, Rhode Island School of Design, and the School of Visual Arts.

Inhaltsangabe

1 Basics 11
2 Multiplayer Games 37
3 Infrastructure 71
4 Games as Systems 101
5 Indeterminacy 137
6 Player Effort 167
7 Superstructure 203
8 Appendixes 245
Appendix A: Von Neumann Game Theory 245
Appendix B: Combinatorial Game Theory 255
Appendix C: List of Games 271
Bibliography 301
Index 305