Online Game Interactivity Theory (Advances in Computer Graphics and Game Development Series)

Rating:
Summary: game design theory
Review: Friedl provides extremely helpful insight for those interested in learning game design theory. Although there are many practical guides to game design, to my knowledge, no other book addresses theory. I found this to be very well written and organized with in depth coverage of material within each chapter. I highly recommend Online Game Interactivity Theory and cannot wait for more books from this author!

Rating:
Summary: Great insight into theoretical principles of game design!
Review: Friedl provides extremely helpful insight for those interested in learning game design theory. Although there are many practical guides to game design, to my knowledge, no other book addresses theory. I found this to be very well written and organized with in depth coverage of material within each chapter. I highly recommend Online Game Interactivity Theory and cannot wait for more books from this author!

Rating:
Summary: game design theory
Review: The book is, as the titles suggests, theory and there are no code listings... The book is about game design and you can hope to learn fundamental lessons in how to design the programming libraries, but you're not going to learn the actual source code that does the job.

It is nicely divided up to cover the major interactivity types - player-player, player-game, player-computer... It also covers the other necessary theory - tools and the development process. These are done very well.

It also covers the pure theory behind why humans play games in the "anthropology and playology" section. On face value, it's something you would actually expect in a psychology or philosophy text book... but this makes you realize that issues like that are a part of the game design process too... and the book teaches you those fundamentals...

One of the best features of this book is the inclusion of examples. In the tools section there are several recognizable illustrations of recent popular games. They are also referenced in the actual text. Doing this, the author makes his book on theory become more practical by letting the reader easily relate the text to a real-world experience.

Another great tie-in: interviews and opinions which are covered in the book's last section. After the author has had his say, in this section he invites other prominent figures - game designers, game industry insiders and game theorists - to offer their views and experiences on the subject. This opens up the floor to the theory of not just one, but many individuals.