Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals Reviews

• 
  Douglas Summers-Stay

  When I was at NYU, I worked on a few different video game projects. We were both programming the game and acting as game designers. I read this book back then and just finished rereading it, now that I'm working on game design again. My favorite part of the book was about the categorization of fun. Here is a list:
  Sensation: The fun of having your senses stimulated.
  Fantasy: The fun of losing yourself in an imaginary world and being something you’re not.
  Narrative: The fun of experiencing a well-told story.
  Challenge: The fun of overcoming obstacles.
  Fellowship: The fun of interacting with others and working together.
  Discovery: The fun of exploring and uncovering things.
  Expression: The fun of leaving your personal mark on the world.
  Submission: The fun of of turning your brain off and doing effortless things.
  I personally favor beautiful scenes, exploration, artistic expression, and story in my games. I like only a little bit of challenge (I play almost all games on the easiest mode available), am not particularly social, and actively dislike competition with other players. Other people, though, have very different priorities.
  As a kid, I spent a lot of time trying to make up the perfect game. I thought maybe it was possible to create an infinitely fun game, one that never gets old. I now feel the only infinite game is real life, in a way I didn't see then. Discovery, beautiful places, expression, friendship-- the richness of the best of real life makes all games pale by comparison. I'm still fascinated, though, by trying to capture part of that potential and parcel it up to share with other people. Dissecting fun has a feeling of unweaving the rainbow, as Keats puts it. You have to take a thing apart, though, to really understand what makes it tick.
  
• 
  Graham Herrli

  This dry, yet thorough, book draws upon research and theory in sundry fields (such as cybernetics, probability, and systems theory) to develop a thorough theory of game design as a field of its own.
  
  One thing this book does both repeatedly and well is to describe a fundamental game structure and then suggest a modification of this structure that inspires thoughts of entire games based upon that tweak. For example, after describing the formal properties of poker rules, they suggest that a new game could be made by using something other than cards while following the same rules (p. 121). In
  Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal describes just such a game: she designed a version of poker that uses tombstones instead of cards.
  
  Salen and Zimmerman consider designing for the interactivity of a game on three levels: rules (game pieces and their interactions), gameplay (players and their interactions), and culture (interactions between the outside world and the game). This structure moves them from considering the formal structure of games, through the experience they create, to how they interplay with their environment.
  
  This book also contains commissioned writings from such big names as Richard Garfield and Reiner Knizia about their design processes.
  
  
  Some things this book says are:
  
  *With regard to establishing a critical vocabulary for game design, they write “Held in too orthodox a manner, definitions become a way of shutting down communication and insight” (p. 3). This view aligns with that later expressed by Jesse Schell in
  The Art of Game Design (Schell, p . 25)
  *Feedback must not only give immediate acknowledgement that an action has occurred, but also show the value of that action within the larger game (p. 34-5).
  *They provide eight definitions of game (73-9) and combine these into “A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome” (p. 80). The authors suggest that ideas that push at the edges of the definition are those best suited to develop in new areas (p. 82). Toward the end of the book, they partially retract the requirement that games be artificial, when considering games as a cultural environment (p. 572).
  *They assume that “just because a poorly designed game fails to be absorbing doesn’t mean that it is not a game” (p. 75). I’m inclined to disagree; a poorly designed chair ceases to be a chair if you can’t sit in it. The authors allow for this openness of interpretation: “whether or not a game is a game rests in the eye of the beholder” (p. 82).
  *A “lusory attitude” is the willful creation of obstacles to make accomplishing something more challenging and fun (p. 98).
  *Each game has three types of rules: operational (governing the physical actions), constitutive (governing the underlying mathematical system), and implicit (p. 127-35).
  *They consider systems with four increasing degrees of complexity: static, periodic, complex, and chaotic (p. 155-6). The distinction between complex and chaotic is unclear; in
  Theory of Fun, Raph Koster proposed that noise is just signals that we don’t understand (Koster, p. 24), which suggests that the difference between “complex” and “chaotic” systems may just be our current ability to model them.
  *Uncertainty is essential to games. Televised sports are aired live because games are far less interesting when you know the outcome (p. 174).
  *From an information theory standpoint, a good game system must be rigid enough to restrict choices yet free enough to give choices meaning (p. 199).
  *In a system of perfect information, each player has access to all game information at all times (p. 204). Introducing imperfect information can add an element of mystery, deceit, or luck to a game (p. 205). Shifting information between that known only to the game, that known only to some players, and that known to all players during a game can add an intriguing element of information flow to a game (p. 206-9).
  *Negative feedback loops can help to keep games close. Positive feedback loops can be kept in control if all players have access to the same positive loops (p. 218-24).
  *If you structure a game to allow for direct comparisons, players will create their own forms of competition regarding those metrics (p. 254).
  *Players have to cooperate in agreeing a game exists before they can compete (p. 256).
  *In addition to designing the experience within the magic circle, it is necessary to design the entry points into it. Before you can motivate people to pursue a game’s goal, you must first motivate them to to enter a game (by supporting ease of [1] marketing, [2] social promotion, [3] setup, and [4] entry into the beginning stages of the game) (p. 333).
  *Csikszentmihalyi’s prerequisites for flow are similar to the requirements for meaningful play (p. 338).
  *Play is free movement within a more rigid structure. Once play becomes addictive, it is no longer volitional, and thus no longer play (p. 356).
  *The game world and the events of the narrative are closely linked. People will have preconceptions about what will occur in a given world, and the narrative will also help to determine how an unfamiliar world is perceived (p. 402-3).
  *The greater the breadth of scope a game has, the more players will expect to be able to do, and thus, ironically, the more strongly they will notice the limitations of the game (p. 441).
  *The immersive fallacy is the belief that making a simulation more realistic is alone sufficient to cause people to become immersed in it, when in reality people become immersed in the meaning caused by the simulation, only one component of which is its fidelity (p. 453).
  *"Games are social contexts for cultural learning. This means that games have an ideological dimension: they are one context through which society passes on its values” (p. 534). Although probably not intended as a pun, the words “passes on” could mean “transmits” or “skips over.”
  *Even when games are integrated into the real world, they are still to some extent artificial because they are designed. The magic circle must be partially maintained to ensure that people feel secure participating in the game (p. 558-87).
  
• 
  stephen k

  I did a lot of skimming here. The authors don't begin to understand how video games differ from traditional games or how to talk about them as the remarkably novel creation that they are. As a result, they write almost entirely about traditional games and the video games that closely resemble them. Most of this book could have been written before video games were ever invented, which shows how little they focus on how they are actually unique. If you're interested in video games as sets of limiting rules that provoke competition, this could be the book for you, but I don't think that's a subject worth spending time on. Hopefully some of the references they provided will be more interesting.
• 
  Virginia

  Lots of people in the reviews complaining that this academic textbook isn’t for gamerz. If your goal in life is to make a Triple-A clone “with a twist” then I am sorry to say you are probably not the target audience :(
• 
  Matt

  The pretentious forward was the opening number in a scattergun approach to the topic that just felt so shallow compared to discussions you might hear on The Forge or Extra Credits or EnWorld or really anywhere that gaming fanatics gather to discuss theory. A dreary dull text that will be of no interest to anyone that would be interested in reading it, written by dreary dull academics that haven't a clue really what they are talking about and know less about game design than the average experienced GM.
  
  The only somewhat redeeming portion of the book were the four games the writer had asked prominent game designers to design for the book. But perhaps the book would have been a lot less dull and a lot more insightful if the designers had also been allowed to write the book. Those that can, should also be teaching.
• 
  Dan Slimmon

  It's clear that the authors are extremely well read. The book is jam packed with different conceptual frames in which to place games. But it never really comes together into a coherent book. It feels more like a brain dump (albeit of two huge brains).
  
  There were several really strong ideas that I thought could've been books, or units, to themselves. In particular, the idea of games as systems of metacommunication (how we signify what is play and what is not) strikes me as fascinating and rich. The chapter on narrative was also very good: the distinction between what games represent and how games themselves are represented is a powerful one.
  
  The authors don't seem to understand information theory very well. I found it disappointing that such a germane topic received only one brief and confusing chapter.
  
  Overall, I thought this book lacked focus. I have no doubt that the authors could write several excellent books on games between them if they stuck to more circumscribed areas of investigation.
• 
  Gabriel

  As was mentioned in earlier reviews, I, too, did a lot of skimming in this book. That's because the information was given in a very repetitive nature. There are a few good points, such as looking at games as a system and an emphasis on iterative design to know for sure that a game plays smoothly.
  
  However, I did not really like the writing style that the authors chose. When advancing to a new topic, several different definitions would be introduced and explained, after which the authors would pick their favorite parts and conclude on a single definition that encompasses all of the other ones. In practice this is, of course, an effective route to take when trying to understand your own take on a subject, but normally I suppose the process is done more behind-the-scenes, with the authors skipping to the part where they share their concluding definition.
  
  If you decide to pick this book up, I suggest skimming through to pick out the main ideas (there are even section summaries at the end of each section). Otherwise, the book may begin to drag on.
• 
  Max

  It basically just says that games are systems are and over. Flipping to a random page, here's an example: "It is clear that games are systems and that complexity and emergence affect meaningful play." Basically every sentence is like this, too abstract to mean anything. Absolutely horribly written and unpleasant to read. The authors are pretentious and have nothing actually to say. You WILL get a headache reading this; you WON'T ever be able to apply any of it.
  
  It focuses a huge amount on giving "definitions" for things. In fact, it not only gives you the definition, but it gives you multiple definitions to allow you to follow the other's reasoning until he concludes, "yeah so if you just look at all these definitions that's the basic flavor of it." Oh yeah and usually the "definition" has the word "system" in it.
  
  Don't buy this book.
• 
  Noah

  An extensive and in-depth study on game design. The basic format is how games fit into different schema and how to design games by thinking about all the different possible ways to look at games. Katie Salen and Aaron Zimmerman use a plethora of games from classic card games to current (at the time this was written) games to illustrate their points. Their are also four games made specifically for this book that are included in the book. Many parts are very interesting, but it can get dry at points. The authors also tend to repeat themselves quite often. The points they repeat are quite important, but it can get a little redundant.
• 
  Aaron

  Reading this made me realize that I'm mostly interested in game design as a hobbyist. That being said, I think this is probably the most complete textbook available on the subject and is really ahead of its time with the range of topics it covers. My main complaint is that most of the case studies are on really boring games that I doubt most readers have played. It gets pedantic at times, but most writing in academia does.
• 
  Catherine

  Was a guinea pig for this book in several grad school classes. I turned out pretty OK!
  
  Good intro to basic game design principles and thinkers. You can probably get away with reading chapter summaries, though, if you have any experience with game production, design, or critical thinking in general.
• 
  Ali Akhavan

  Some chapters were not well structured; however, the book gave lots of insights about games. Magic circle and lusory attitude were new to me. For a game designer, considering different types of rules in games such as constitutive, operational, and implicit rules are critical in designing a meaningful game.
  Last but not least, enjoy playing games :)
• 
  Eduardo Omine

  I read the first "unit" and skimmed through the rest of this book. The content is actually good, but the text being set in a small sans-serif typeface makes it hard to read.
• 
  Mikko Saari

  Pelitutkimus on tieteenalana varsin tuore, eikä siitä ole kirjoitettu montakaan hyvää ja kattavaa perusteosta. Rules of Play onkin parasta tähän mennessä näkemääni. Kirja käsittelee pelaamista hyvin kattavasti ja perusteellisesti monesta eri näkökulmasta.
  
  Kirja ei välttämättä anna paljoa lukijalle, joka on vain kiinnostunut pelien pelaamisesta, mutta jos peliharrastus ulottuu pelien suunnittelemiseen tai analysoimiseen (esimerkiksi peliarvostelujen kirjoittamiseen), on Rules of Play suositeltavaa luettavaa. Varoituksen sanana sanottakoon, että kirja on selkeästi akateeminen teos. Se ei kuitenkaan ole akateemisen kuivakka, vaan luettavasti kirjoitettu.
  
  Lautapeliharrastajia kiinnostanee erityisesti Reiner Knizian essee Taru Sormusten Herrasta -lautapelin synnystä. (27.2.2004)
• 
  Ignacio

  Didn't like it. Way to dense and theory filled. It basically analyses the why and how on everything game related, so it gives you a veeery deep and through break down of the theories and concepts behind games, but it doesn't add much to it. It's a bit like looking for traveling guide in Spain, and reading a book about it's history. Yes you'll understand how and why Spain is the way it is, but it doesn't tell you where to go or to stay, or were you should eat. If you want more 'hands in' design learning, I think The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses it's a much better book.
• 
  Tug Brice

  Easily the most informative book on game design I have ever read. It is useful even for non-game designers. Salen and Zimmerman break down games on multiple levels, analyzing them as more than just things to have fun with. That deep analysis shows how games and game-like situations show up more often than you might think in everyday life. Just a fantastic book. I recommend it to everyone.
• 
  Anthony Serenil

  A must read for any aspiring game designer.
  
  I found this book invaluable to learning the concepts of game design. The teaching of design of games via the use of schemas made for a very thorough look of games.
• 
  Blake Williford

  Extremely academic.... You're better off using your intuition to design games then reading something like this. We've been surrounded by great games for decades - Learn from them, not academic writing.
• 
  Valery

  Good book on theory of game design
• 
  Paula G.

  mixed feelings pero no os voy a dar la turra por aquí
• 
  Mia

  Useful but a bit dry. Definitely had useful concepts but the lack of differentiation between video games and traditional games made it less useful. Would have enjoyed more of the technical aspects.
• 
  Andrew

  Recommended in
  Gametek.
• 
  Xenophule

  A bit academic in places, but overall very useful in ludology for tabletop games.
• 
  Michelle English

  A Plethora of well written information, love this book
• 
  Carlos Domínguez

  It is a heavy, extensive and a daunting but good entry point for game design basics.
  
  This book dissects game design from the inside out. From the formal, mathematical, logical approach all the way up to the cultural side, and it's quite an eye opening journey.
  
  Because of this, the reader must be aware that the book focuses more on breadth than depth, but again, that's good as it's set to be a starting point for game design in general and seeks to help the reader to establish a formal game design vocabulary.
  
  It's also useful to know that the infromation is mostly theorical, but you'll always find some examples of commissioned games specifically designed for each of the major sections that will link theoric and empiric knowledge.
  
  As a whole I think it's a must read for game design enthusiasts, it pours and shows the knowledge, the experience and love for the profession from both authors and it will also be a door to other fantastic authors and design philosophies.
• 
  Michael Scott

  
  Rules of Play is an academic textbook about game design. Starting from a framework with three components---the rules (organization of the game), the play (gameplay experience), and the culture (game context)---,
  Katie Salen introduces a (formidable) theory of game design. Two more topics are part of this textbook: an introduction to games, and an introduction to game design. While I found the theory to be on the dry side, I enjoyed reading about the design processes of five game designers, four of which design a game each for this book. Overall, a must-read for wannabe game designers.