Rating: 
Summary: Major breathrough in games!
Review: As someone who plays games as well as works in the industry, this book is a major breakthrough in isolating what is currently missing from most games. David does a brilliant job of bringing what he calls "emotioneering" to the gaming experience, finding literally hundreds of techniques to insure that players find deeper emotional gratification with the game play and the characters they're identifying with. David has great knowledge of games as well as television and movies upon which he draws. It's a great read - I found myself laughing, getting insights, and just having a great time with David's writing style and wit. I recommend this book highly to gamers, designers, writers, and anyone who wants to know more about what makes a great entertainment experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Lazy and self serving
Review: David Freeman is a third string TV writer in LA who supplements his income with consulting work in the videogame industry. (He's one of the people who wrote those awful seventh season episodes of the X-Files.) Unamazingly, he's written a book that proves that hiring a thrid string TV writer is always the best thing you can possibly do to help with a videogame. The book's highlight is an unintentionally funny chapter where he explains that hiring any other sort of writer (including a *successful* TV writer) just won't do the job...As for any intelligent discussion of the real difficulties of integrating narative with a flow state experience - forget it.
Rating: 
Summary: Want pointers for game writing/design? Get this book
Review: Good book. A good book indeed.
For those of us interested in writing/designing pc and videogames, a book like this one really comes in handy.
But before I ramble with the good side of it, I'll mention the three aspects I disliked about it:
First, I was a bit annoyed with the cocky attitude. Most of the time it sounded as if, either you use emotioneering techniques (term created by David Freeman) or your game will never have emotion or be any good at all. This might sound like a big deal, but I have to accept it, after reading the explanation of what emotioneering is and why it is better than simple writing, well, he does make some very good points... nonetheless, the attitude bothered me a bit so you might want to be ready for it. The second thing that bothered me is that the author teases TOO much about the hundreds of other techniques that exist... but that is it. I do understand that there had to be a limit as to how long the book would be and mentioning all the techniques and explaining them in a proper way would take way too much, but still, where am I supposed to learn about the rest? I WANT MORE! The last issue doesn't really have to do with content as it does with form. And is definitely not a very big issue, as a matter of fact, I only mention it because I thought that, in order to stay as objective as possible, I needed more "bad points".
The thing is there are many typing mistakes. They aren't orthographic mistakes, they definitely look just like typos, but still they hinder a bit the quality of the book. And that is it, as far as I am concerned, the rest of the book is just good stuff.
For starters I have to praise the great pointers on creating characters. The ideas for both the physical and internal aspects of an NPC and PC opened my eyes to a whole new way of giving life to characters. And the goodness doesn't stop there. You also get techniques for plot, dialogue, relationship between NPCs and PCs, ways to make the game more immersive, pointers on cinematics, etc.
Trust me, even when David Freeman cuts back on the list of techniques available (and if you are like me, you'll also be left craving for more), there are many more than the ones I mentioned, and most of them have subdivisions with great explanations and examples of how to use them or how they have been used. I am sure you'll also enjoy the foreword by Will Wright (The Sims guy) and the lovely art scattered throughout the book. Another point in favor of Mr. Freeman is the fact that he gives credit where credit is due. There is even a section at the end of the book that mentions every artist, where you can find more about them and comments on most of them.
The last tidbits of ideas are very interesting, very fun to read because they seem like the ramblings most of us write in that old notebook, the scattered ideas that someday might find their way into a book and/or game. Now I think I've written too much, so I'll wrap this up by saying that if you are interested in game designing/writing, this book is a must for you. You won't regret buying it and if you do... nah, that won't happen if you are interested in games , I'm confident about that =)
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Summary: A HANDBOOK FOR THE FUTURE WRITTEN BY A WORKING GAME DESIGNER
Review: I first bought this book after reading all the great reviews of it here on Amazon. I passed it around at my company, and by now the game designers I work with and I (at a large Los Angeles developer) have worn our copies of this book ragged with use. With its 300 specific techniques, "Creating Emotion in Games" moves emotional game design ahead by decades.
It's quite generous of Mr. Freeman to share so many secrets. It's clear why Will Wright (The Sims) chose to write the forward, and why gamasutra said it was the best book ever written on the subject.
The book is helped by the fact that Freeman is such an expert on gameplay. He has been hired to help design and write games for Sony, Electronic Arts, Activision, Microsoft, Atari, Midway, 3D Realms, and others.
In the book (which, by the way, is packed with beautiful art), Freeman divides all the ways of making games emotionally engaging into 32 categories. He then gives about 7 or 8 examples of techniques from each category, and shows exactly how to apply every one, without exception.
For instance, one category involves techniques to get a player to identify with the character he/she plays. Another category is techniques to make the player bond emotionally with the NPCs (non-player characters). Another involves ways to make the world of the game emotionally rich and inviting -- be it a military game, science fiction, or something else.
Freeman's clear and warm style, and his off-beat sense of humor make the book a fun and easy read.
After buying the book, I got curious about the author and did a little research on Emotioneering on the web. I learned that Freeman is an in-demand speaker game conferences in the U.S. and around the world.
He has sold a bunch of scripts to Hollywood studios, and is writing a pair of big fantasy films which are being shot in the summer of 2005. He also teaches the largest screenwriting workshop in Los Angeles (based at Universal Pictures) -- no small feat in a city with hundreds of such teachers.
My goal as a designer is to enhance gameplay by moving players emotionally, and to leave them changed by my games. If you share these goals, your creativity is in for a rocket ride when you apply the techniques in this book.
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Summary: A must read for creative game professionals
Review: I'm a senior game designer with almost a decade of experience creating console based action/adventure games. I'm very confident in my ability to create fun gameplay, but I've always been hesitant about my abilities as a creative writer. The stuff I've tended to put into games has been "okay", by game standards, but is also cliche-ridden and emtionally flat. But having read David's Freeman's book, I can honestly say that I now feel equipped with the necessary tools to create solid, dramatically compelling narratives for the games I work on from now on. David's book is filled to the brim with useful writing techniques that are easily applicable to any creative writing application... things like easy step-by-step processes to create emtionally complex characters, inserting symbolism into gameplay, writing realistic and entertaining dialog, etc. etc. Also, the book is great for those without any professional screenplay training (like myself), who are called upon daily to create Hollywood-level scripts for their games. All of David's techniques are backed up by real-world examples taken from hit motion pictures or top-notch games, and David also provides dozens of original gameplay and story ideas that could easily be used as a basis for great new games. As if that wasn't enough, the book is also full of really beautful art, drawn from comics, games, and plenty of original stuff too. The book is just beautiful to look at, with a very unique structure and typography that makes it easy to keep reading through its 500 information-packed pages. In short, if you're looking for inspiration to get you writing better games, you must get this book. While there's plenty of theory, it's really a manual for application. Use these techniques and you WILL create better dramatic content for your games.
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Summary: A great book for writers of all genres
Review: I've been writing for several years now, and after reading Freeman's book, I realize I still haven't gotten serious enough about writing. "Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering" is an excellent book for anyone interested in creating emotional experiences, and the techniques obviously carry over into many genres of writing. Just from the first two sections, I've seen my creativity soar, and the depth and involvment of the designs I am working on reach levels I never even considered. Here's the downside: It's not enough. Now that's not exactly a fault of the book, or of Freeman, as he stated he had to cull 1500+ Emotioneering techniques down to merely 300. In order to get everything, we'd be reading a whole library. Still, this book is an amazing and outstanding book to use as a diving board, but anyone really serious about writing for games (or other genres) should commit some very serious time into some very serious study. If this book inspires you as it has me, you'll find yourself more eager to do some serious writing time.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful, but lacks focus
Review: I've had a handful of screenwriting classes, and some limited practical experience with making games. I thought this book delivered on what it promised, yet at the same time I felt there are many problems with the way its written. Freeman uses what seems to be a highly methodological way of dealing with the 'soft' issue of emotion in games. You'll find countless references to elaborate terms such as "NPC Toward Player Relationship Deepening Techniques", "Emotionally Complex and Situation Techniques" and so on. Some very specific examples even get their own designated capitalized label. Structured as this seems, it actually only helps to make things confusing. A lot of the "hundreds" of techniques are quite similar, and without a clear overarching framework, things get very convoluted. Some great knowledge and insights are contained in this book, mind you. I personally found some of the hypothetical games and game scenarios that are presented valuable. However, the knowledge is fragmented and disorganized. Freeman quickly jumps from one thing to the next, without a clear underlying logic as to how all the information is distributed among the chapters. The book especially emphasizes quantity -- Freeman even refers to things beyond the scope of the book, i.e. "this would take way too long to explain, but let me give you the short version". I think the book would be a lot better if the information were better organized. The book leaves a lot to be wanted in terms of focus and clarity, and the author trademarking the term Emotioneering and claiming all of his tips & tricks to be his own invention is a little questionable. This book needs a new edition, or someone else needs to come along and tackle this (very important) subject from a different angle.
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Summary: Meant to Impress, not to Educate
Review: If books had a dressing contest, this one would surely take first place. It applies every imaginable gimmick for the sole purpose of impressing the reader. There are many pictures in it, all of which are sensational adolescent fantasy material, many filling a full page and sometimes in color. The text is broken up in various ways, with intervening boxes and sidebars in incosistent shapes and sizes, as if designed specifically to distract you. Its "techniques" are trademarked under the bombastic name "Emotioneering", and worst of all, the author makes a point of repeatedly flaunting his screen(game)writing prowess.
But what are these "Emotioneering" techniques? has freeman actually invented a set of technical rules which applies to drama? No, that would be Aristotle. If you're really interested in the rules of drama, that's who you should read. What Freeman refers to as "Emotioneering" are nothing more than a pile of bad screenwrting practices you can pick up in any second rate screenwriting book - except for two differences; first, in this sorry book they are given mind-blowing names like "technique stacking" and "Emotionally Complex Moments and Situations Techniques", and second, the examples used are said to be taken "from games" instead of from films, but, of course, all of these "games" have been imagined by Freeman for the purpose of the book (which he expressly admits), because there IS no real world game that would serve his purpose - he is really talking about films.
But when it comes to films, Freeman seems to think the The Lord of the Rings trilogy is about the best you can get. Ask any amateur screenwriter and they'll tell you that the one award these films honestly deserve is Worst Screenplay. The Lord of the Rings, like Freeman's book, is all spectacle and no content.
What kept me trudging through the morass of simpleton notions and overflowing filler text was the hope that, as a man who has some experience with writing for games, Freeman would have a few words to say about the intersection of stories with interactivity - the most alluring aspect of combining games with stories. Although he doesn't take up the subject directly, he does mention at some point that writing for games is complicated by the need to accommodate for the actions of the player. He says that he uses branching statements in his scripts for this, and that this is a very tough problem. Other than that, there are some minor points like how to allow the player to experience the events of your computerized screenplay in several different orders (which is made possible only by the ridicules simplicity of the story proposed as an example), but nothing which actually deals with letting a human have a meaningful interaction with a story.
To summarize, except for the pictures (if that's your cup of tea) I really can't see any reason to buy this book over any other random heap of text. If you want spectacle, you got it. If you want knowledge, you do yourself a favor and read three books: The Poetics by Aristotle, for the real "Emotioneering" techniques, Chris Crawford on Game Design, for an understanding of why the problem is not nearly as simple as Freeman pretends it to be, and Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling for the best solutions to the problem currently available.
Rating:
Summary: A book with concrete ways to help you make better games.
Review: If you aspire to be a video game developer or are already a designer in the industry, and are looking to raise the emotional value of your games, then this is the book for you. It's by David Freeman (a guy that also teaches this subject to Hollywood writers) and gives by far the most in-depth look at how to make your story and characters more deep & interesting. It's really quite inspiring as you soon realize that instead of the book trying to rah-rah you along (then leaving you empty handed), it actually shows you HOW to do it! Meaning there are VERY clear examples of how the professionals pull it off and it's easy to adopt those tried and tested techniques yourself. It's also quite an amusing read as he does not get too bogged down, and ultimately surprises you with just how many parts you need to understand to make up an emotional story. I highly recommend it.
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Summary: How to Hire the Freeman Group
Review: If you want to learn to write, pick any Writer's Digest book on the topic of your choice and you'll be fine. If you want to design a game, I recommend just about any other book with the word "game" in the title. You won't learn any of that here. On the other hand, if you want to know how to hire David Freeman and the Freeman Group, this book is for you. In general, there are 2 types of "How to" book: 1) "How you" books, which actually try to teach you something; and 2) "How I" books, which explain how the author will do what he does as soon as you hire him to do it. This is definitely a "How I" book. Finally, any book that sums up the plot of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as "Two Major Characters Change Places" (capitalized because this is one of the vaunted "1500 Emotioneering Techniques") is not going to teach you anything useful.
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