game design books?

I don't know if I would recommend Rules of Play. I'm only halfway through it, but so far I'd say about 3/4 of it has been pure fluff, at least from the viewpoint of someone who actually wants to design games rather than just talk about game design. There were some interesting bits, such as their discussion of feedback loops and dice mechanics, and the sample game designs (by Knizia and others), so it might be worth checking out of the library. But I think the game design forum here has much more useful material.

Has anyone thought of collecting and organizing posts from BGDF into a book (maybe print on demand or PDF)?

Emphyrio,

Thank you. I thought i was the only person that didn't get the appeal of "Rules of Play".

it seems interesting

- Dwight

Has anyone here read A Theory of Fun? I was under the impression it is more a general book on why people like to play games, but after reading their website, I'm not so sure now.

You can read excerpts from it here:
http://www.theoryoffun.com/excerpt.shtml

-Darke

I don't think this isn't true at all. Indeed, it's what makes game design so unusual - there aren't many things that haven't been done before, and on their own, those don't make for great games. What seems to work is taking things that have been done before and twisting them or extending them in some way, or combining them in ways that haven't been tried, or adding that novel idea to a solid foundation.
Not only that, but knowing what has been done before is exactly the sort of thing that leads to those novel ideas - otherwise they turn out to be not so novel after all (I can't tell you how often this has happened to me, and I'm sure others will say the same.)
Often it's useful to dissect the mechanisms of a game to see exactly where the different parts may have developed from. Take "Ticket to Ride" for example: someone noted that essentially it was a very neatly disguised variant of Contract Rummy - but the disguise is very appealing... Indeed, this is one of the things this forum has done well - discussing why "big" games work (or don't work!)

In the absence of easily-accessible academic courses (there are a growing number but not nearly enough), a lot of this groundwork in design has to be done through sites like this, or books that are equally breaking new ground.
*Then* you can start worrying about coming up with ideas that no-one has done before ;-))

A Theory Of Fun is on my bookshelf, where it will probably remain - I found it to be an interesting read, but quite abstract and without much practical advice for designing games. It is more of a psychology book... the psychology of gamers, of game designers, of how we interact with games, and how they create the intangible known as "fun." If you can find it to borrow, I'd recommend it for a one-time readthrough. Not necessary for a board-game designer's reference library though, in my opinion.

~Josh

I love that book! It's awesome, just a great read and as you say, it's about the "values" of making a game. It's not going to tell you exactly how to set up a reward system to keep people coming back (though it does give some ideas!), but it gives you a more broad angle to look at the whole concept. No nuts & bolts, just theory (as the title says!).

I read A Theory of Fun and enjoyed it immensely. Don't read it expecting a nuts-and-bolts kind of book. It's more about what people look for in a game and what satisfies them and a little bit about how we can make better games.

I also read Rules of Play. It's okay, but I found it less interesting than A Theory of Fun. It's more of a laundry list of techniques and mechanics used in various games.

I've just finished 21st-Century Game Design, which is tilted towards computer games, but has some interesting insights applicable to any game. Unfortunately, it too has laundry list chapters that feel remedial if you're at all familiar with the game market and game design. At Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1584504293/qid=1135894778/sr=2-1/ref=pd...

I minored in math in college and the two topics I refer to the most when working on a game are discrete mathematics (permutations, combinations, etc.) and graph theory (travelling salesman problem, color graphs, shortest path algorithms, etc.). Definitely look into those if you haven't. They're pretty easy topics, too...easier than calculus.