Game Design Annotated Links
I’ve been meaning to post these for a while — I read a lot of game design stuff while working on Rubicon. Here’s some of the stuff that I found to be particularly useful/insightful/interesting.
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“Ten Things Every Game Needs” - Magic the Gathering is a wonderfully heavily-designed game and Mark Rosewater’s column “Making Magic” provides a thoughtful window into the process of its creation and maintaining its long-term health. “Restrictions breed creativity!” is the mantra of the day.
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“The Ten Principles for Good Design” (part two) - Rosewater, “Making Magic”.
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“Resolutions” - Rosewater, “Making Magic”.
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“Juice it or lose it” - A talk aptly demonstrating the power of tiny reactive effects and how it can bring a game to life.
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“Video Games and the Human Condition” - A talk by Jonathan Blow. Goes over developer “best practices” on how to make a game compelling to play and then ethically questions the use of such tactics. “With great power comes great responsibility.”
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“Conflicts in Game Design” - Another talk by Blow, how a game’s premise & its mechanics interact.
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“Figures: They Speak For Themselves” - from the tumblr of Dresden Codak. Although it’s not directly game-related, reading Aaron Diaz’s posts on visual design show the right sort of attitude (read: insanely meticulous) in what it takes to carefully craft an experience for an audience.
Edit (2016): I wrote about another batch of links here: Game Design Annotated Links Part 2
Edit (July 2019): Dylan from a program at the Salt Lake City Children's Network recommends this Programming Guide For Video-Gamers for additional resources for beginner game designers. There's a few broken links, but has a lot of information about careers in games. Thanks, Dylan!
Edit (June 2022): Katie from a Girl Scout troop recommends this post on The Technology Behind Virtual Reality: Coding and Design for anyone interested in programming VR games (something that didn’t really exist when I first wrote this post!). It has everything you need to get started for coding virtual reality games. Thanks, Katie!