Rules of Play
Game Design Fundamentals
by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman.
Had asked for an examination copy a while back and received it today.
Will check it out and post a review.
Reiner Knizia's Commissioned Essay is titled "The design and testing of the Board Game - Lord of the Rings" and is divided in these sections:
-Design Process
-Scripted Game System
-Playtesting
-More Changes
-The Road Goes Ever On
For those who are considering purchasing it, here's a copy of the contents:
Foreword - Frank Lantz
Preface
1 About This Book
2 The Design Process
Commissioned Essay - Reiner Knizia
UNIT 1: Core Concepts
3 Meaningful Play
4 Design
5 Systems
6 Interactivity
7 Defining Games
8 Defining Digital Games
9 The Magic Circle
10 The Primary Schemas: RULES, PLAY, CULTURE
Commissioned Game - Richard Garfield
UNIT 2: Rules
11 Defining Rules
12 Rules on Three Levels
13 The Rules of Digital Games
14 Games as Emergent Systems
15 Games as Systems of Uncertainty
16 Games as Information Theory Systems
17 Games as Systems of Information
18 Games as Cybernetic Systems
19 Games as Game Theory Systems
20 Games as Systems of Conflict
21 Breaking the Rules
Commissioned Game - Frank Lantz
UNIT 3: PLAY
22 Defining Play
23 Games as the Play of Experience
24 Games as the Play of Pleasure
25 Games as the Play of Meaning
26 Games as Narrative Play
27 Games as the Play of Simulation
28Games as Social Play
Commissioned Game - Kira Snyder
UNIT 4: CULTURE
29 Defining Culture
30 Games as Cultural Rhetoric
31 Games as Open Culture
32 Games as Cultural Resistance
33 Games as Cultural Environment
Commissioned Game - James Ernest
Additional Reading and Resources
Conclusion
Bibliography
List of Games Cited
THE OTHER BOOK
The Games We Played. The Golden Age of Board and Table Games by Margaret Hofer
As families are rediscovering the joys and virtues of staying and entertaining at home, board games have surged in popularity - indeed, sales doubled in the last year alone. This mirrors a trend in the late nineteenth century - the heyday of American board and table gamesúúwhen, fueled by the introduction of color lithography, an explosion in the production of games coincided with a growing need for middle-class social entertainment.
Then, like now, the games that best captured players' imaginations mimicked, and sometimes poked fun at, the culture that produced them. Organized around themes such as courtship, commerce, travel, sports, and city life, The Games We Played brings together over one hundred eye-catching examples of America's rare and popular board games, such as The Game of Playing Department Store, which encouraged players to accumulate the greatest quantity of goods while spending their money as economically as possible, and Bulls and Bears: The Great Wall St. Game, in which players try their hand as speculators, bankers, and brokers, yelling each other down as if in a trading pit.
This playful visual survey and its thematic essays will cause board and table game aficionados to share in the revelry of togetherness.
Margaret K. Hofer is associate curator of decorative arts at the New-York-Historical Society.
PAPress, 2003, 10.25 x 10.5 inches (26.0 x 26.7 cm), Hardcover binding, 176 pages, 160 four-color plates
The Games We Played. The Golden Age of Board and Table Games
by Margaret Hofer
The ISBN is 1568983972
Amazon has got it.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1568983972/qid=1075990038/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6788917-6065741?v=glance&s=books