What This Book Is (and Isn t) About

What This Book Is (and Isn't) About

Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design contains our combined thoughts on the important issues that relate to designing games . We don't claim that it's the final word on game design. No book could be. We have chosen to address areas that we believe are important and under- served , and we don't expect everyone to agree with us on every point. That's the beauty and the terror of game design: There are no right answers.

We offer a game design methodology intended to spur your thinking and get your creative juices flowing . In this book, you will not find step-by-step instructions on how to create the next Doom or Tetris clone. Instead, we discuss the central issues that every game designer must face, and we pose a series of questions for you to ask yourself about the game that's in your head. The answers to those questions will move you along the path from idea to design.

One area that we have not addressed is level design. The reason for this is simple: There is no one standard way to design levels. Level design considerations are different for each genre of game, and we simply don't have the space to address them all properly. By examining the essential elements of a genre , we hope to give you the tools to design enjoyable levels, but the process itself is, as they say, "left as an exercise for the reader."

You are at the beginning of a voyage of discovery. Our book is a map with white space beyond the borders. We are sharing what we know about game design in order to enable you to navigate through the familiar regions and then to press on into terra incognita . We hope that you will in turn transmit your own learning to others, continuing to fill in the map and helping to push out the boundaries of game design. The journey begins here.