Preface

Hi,

I’m David Perry. I’ve been making professional games (getting paid for it) for more than 25 years. It’s the best job ever! I’ve had multiple #1 chart hits and lots of “Game of the Year” awards, and the games I’ve worked on have generated more than a billion dollars in revenues at retail stores around the world. I’ve been really lucky to work with some of the best talent in the industry, and I’ve also been lucky because I’ve become friends with some of the most respected game development luminaries in the world.

Who is this book for?

If you’re a game design student, someone burning with new video game ideas, or you’re working your way up through the design ranks to become a game director, this book is written specifically for you!

Why make a game design book? There are plenty of others.

There are plenty of great game design books that tell you all about the subject and the job. Instead of explaining to you what’s important, such as, “It’s important to make characters interesting,” my goal is to give you hundreds of ways to do exactly that. If I say, “Make it funny,” I also want to give you endless examples of how to make it funny. That’s the difference.

You’re saying I can create new ideas never seen before in video games?

Yes, that’s the whole idea. This book is designed to help trigger your own creative ideas—original ideas that have never been seen before, ever! I have absolutely no doubt this will happen many times as you use the materials I provide here.

Are you sure it works?

Absolutely. As an example, I tested a chapter on a large group of IGDA (International Game Developer’s Association) members. I asked them to come up with an original weapon never seen before in a video game; I wanted one from everyone in the room, and they had just two minutes.

As you can imagine, that’s a tough challenge! But after showing them the section on “Ways to Die” (Chapter 32 of this book), I was hit by a deluge of ideas none of us had ever seen before.

Who is Rusel DeMaria?

Rusel is a good friend of mine and one of the most published writers in the video game industry. It was frankly impossible for me to write this entire book (I’m always running game companies and projects), so I hired Rusel to be my ghostwriter. I don’t know if he anticipated the hundreds of phone calls every time I was driving anywhere, but it became a labor of love for him also. In the end, he devoted so much time and effort on it that I had to admit he was more of a coauthor than a ghost writer.

To be clear, when we are old and gray (already happening), we are hoping to hand over the manuscript to new up-and-coming designers who enjoy the art of creation.

What about new ideas that come up?

This is the first edition of the book. I consider it the stake in the sand and invite the readers to team up with us for the second edition. We’ve created a website at www.gamedesignbook.org to help that discussion happen. (Come and say hi!)

We hope this body of work will continue to be refined—by our readers and by professional designers—and will evolve into the key “reference and inspiration book” for the future generations of game designers.

This book is dedicated to my wife, Elaine, and my little daughter, Emmy.

Big thanks go to Rusel (you rock) and all the people who have contributed in one way or another along the way.

For those reading this, I can’t wait to play your games!

David Perry

www.dperry.com

A Word from Rusel DeMaria

When DP first approached me about this project, he said, “I’ve got this idea I’ve been wanting to do. I know I won’t have time to do it if I don’t get help.” Then he said, “I have been making lists of things to do with games—like the items you might find along a freeway. Let me send you my notes and see what you can do with them.” I really didn’t have any idea what I was getting into and what a fantastic romp it would be, but four years and more than a thousand pages of manuscript later, here we are.

There’s no way we could ever complete this book. Period. At some point we had to say, “It’s done for now.” The many days I spent with my head in my hands, just trying to come up with one more example or one more idea, were a futile attempt to finish something—anything—but what’s exciting is that both DP and I know that you will find things we didn’t think of.

We hope we made it just a little difficult for you to think of what we missed, but we are counting on you to take the material in this book and run with it. If you do—if you create games with ideas that were inspired from this book—then we will have done our job.

Obviously, I never would have had this opportunity without David Perry, a man of infinite creativity, drive, and ideas. It has been massively fun—and that’s the name of the game, isn’t it? Thanks, DP.

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset