Like many people, I’m on a fairly constant quest for self-improvement and self-education. Every once in a while, I’ll do a bulk order of books from Amazon, and in the last batch picked up a couple of books on the topic of game design. I’ve never formally studied game design (instead learning by doing), but there were a couple of books I’d heard about so figured it was worth picking them up.

A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster is not a new book, having been published in about 2005. However it’s still very relevant, and as the title suggests, puts forward a theory about what makes games….fun. Given that games are (often) meant to be fun and entertaining, understanding the concept of fun is important. It’s a very easy read, and I found it pretty interesting and educational.

The Art of Game Design : A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell was first published in 2008. I can’t recommend this book highly enough! It covers a wide range of topics relating to game design, from developing the core experience, through story and character development, gameplay, business models, and much more. The “Book of Lenses” part is interesting too – each subject area contains one or more lenses, which are focus-giving questions that designers can ask themselves to help understand and improve their design. Picking a random example, The Lens of the Interest Curve asks questions about pacing and what captivates players of the game as the game progresses.

There are 100 lenses, so any game design can be tweaked, modified and improved in great detail by examining it through the lenses. There is a  companion publication, The Deck of Lenses, that has each lens and its questions in card form – very handy! There is a lot of material in this book, and I expect to be referring back to it a lot in the future as I explore new game ideas.

Both of these books would fit quite well in any game designers bookshelf.