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[What's the big deal with Jesse Schell's new 'Art Of Game Design' book? Writer and designer Daniel Cook takes a look at the Front Line Award-winning tome to find out.]
Over my holiday vacation I finished reading The Art of
Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell. Schell teaches game design over
at Carnegie Mellon and works in the industry leading Pittsburgh-based Schell Games (, and he has produced a comprehensive and clearly written book
mapping out the conceptual tools and techniques of game design.
The book is
targeted at the new game designer, but seeks to provide enough depth to be
broadly useful to working designers.
It perhaps goes without saying that this
is a book on game design, not game development. It will not teach you about programming, art
or much of any technical production skills. It is about game mechanics, the
player experience, pitching, iterating, and brainstorming; all the messy core
activities of game design.
The book has two organizing principles.
The first is an organically laid out map of all the important elements of a
game design. This allows you to deconstruct a game and gives names to what you
are talking about.
The second is a series of "lenses", or questions,
that you can ask about your game design as you iterate upon it. It is a good book that teaches the craft of
game design in an accessible manner.
Mapping the Process of Game Design
 An excavated ant colony from the documentary Ants: Nature's
Secret Power
Once I saw a video where they poured
cement into an ant colony and then carefully excavated the resulting organic
structure. Bit by bit an intricate city
of interconnecting rooms and passages was revealed.
For some odd reason, this is the exact image
that comes to mind as Schell methodically builds out an elegant yet
comprehensive map of game design.
 Schell's map of
the game design process
The book builds up the basics of game design
one simple piece at a time. It starts
with the rules and tokens of the game, flits through game mechanics, economics
and community and ends with discussion of teams, clients and pitches.
Over the
past few decades, modern game design has accumulated numerous little rooms and
offshoots. It is a rare treat to see it laid bare in all its organically
evolved glory.
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I also recommend Tracy Fullerton's book, which I'm almost done with, although that book deals a little more with the mechanics of creating a game within the context of a team than does The Art of Game Design.
I'm also planning to pick up the companion card set of Lenses. They're like a deck of magic cards, one for each lens.
Both aspiring designers and industry vets looking to improve from the foundation up should check this book out.