(Part 2) Best products from r/gamedesign

> I don't think this was the case.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but you're wrong. Since there's nothing unique or special about it, you're attributing the game's success to "what was done to get people to see it and share it." But this, too, was merely luck. Objectively, we know this must be true--otherwise Nguyen would have unlocked the key to creating a popular game, and others (including himself) could have repeated the same steps to generate the same result. Of course, they did not. I know that's hard to accept, because the human brain is wired to look for cause, and will tend to make up answers it finds plausible just to satisfy itself.

Don't worry, though, you're far from alone in this. Duncan Watts writes a great summary of this effect in Everything Is Obvious, a book everyone should read.

Warning: Long excerpt follows

>For centuries, the Mona Lisa was a relatively obscure painting languishing in the private residences of kings--still a masterpiece, to be sure, but only one among many. Even when it was moved to the Louvre, it did not attract as much attention as the works of other artists [...]. In fact, it wasn't until the twentieth century that the Mona Lisa began its meteoric rise to global brand name. And even then it wasn't the result of art critics suddenly appreciating the genius that had sat among them for so long, nor was it due to the efforts of museum curators, socialites, wealthy patrons, politicians, or kings. Rather, it began with a burglary.

> From that point [Peruggia's burglary in 1911] on, the Mona Lisa never looked back. [P]rimarily, it became a reference point for other artists [...]. As Sassoon points out, all these different people--thieves, vandals, artists, and advertisers, not to mention musicians, moviemakers, and even NASA (remember the crater on Venus?)--were using the Mona Lisa for their own purposes: to make a point, to increase their fame, or simply to use a label they felt would convey meaning to other people. But every time they used the Mona Lisa, it used them back, insinuating itself deeper into the fabric of Western culture and the awareness of billions of people. It is impossible now to imagine the history of Western art without the Mona Lisa, and in that sense it truly is the greatest of paintings. But it is also impossible to attribute its unique status to anything about the painting itself.

>This last point presents a problem because when we try to explain the success of the Mona Lisa, it is precisely its attributes on which we focus our attention. [...] To oversimplify only slightly, the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world because it is the best, and although it might have taken us a while to figure this out, it was inevitable that we would.

> [...] Unfortunately, however, this argument wins only at the cost of eviscerating itself. It sounds as if we're assessing the quality of a work of art in terms of its attributes, but in fact we're doing the opposite--deciding first which painting is best, and only then inferring from its attributes the metrics of quality. Subsequently, we can invoke these metrics to justify the known outcome in a way that seems rational and objective. But the result is circular reasoning. We claim to be saying that the Mona Lisa is the most famous painting in the world because it has the attributes X, Y, and Z. But really what we're saying is that the Mona Lisa is famous because it's more like the Mona Lisa than anything else.

> [...] Although it is rarely presented as such, this kind of circular reasoning--X succeeded because X had the attributes of X--pervades commonsense explanations for why some things succeed and others fail. For example, an article on the success of the Harry Potter books explained it this way [...] In other words, Harry Potter was successful because it had exactly the attributes of Harry Potter and not something else. [...]

> The circularity evident in commonsense explanations is important to address because it derives from what is arguably the central intellectual problem of sociology--which sociologists call the micro-macro problem. The problem, in a nutshell, is that the outcomes that sociologists seek to explain are intrinsically "macro" in nature, meaning that they involve large numbers of people. [...]

> As it turns out, something like the micro-macro problem comes up in every realm of science, often under the label "emergence." [...] Common sense, however, has a remarkable knack for papering over this complexity. [...] By ignoring the interactions between thousands or millions of individual actors, the representative agent simplifies the analysis of business cycles enormously. [...]

>Social influence of this general kind is likely ubiquitous. But unlike the simple threshold of Granovetter's thought experiment [which had determined how many people were needed in a crowd to incite a riot], the resulting decision rule is neither binary nor deterministic. Rather, when people tend to like something that other people like, differences in popularity are subject to what is called cumulative advantage, meaning that once, say, a song or book becomes more popular than another, it will tend to become more popular still. [...]

>Commonsense explanations, remember, focus on the thing itself--the song, the book, the company--and account for its success solely in terms of its intrinsic attributes.If we were to imagine history being somehow "rerun" many times, therefore, explanations in which intrinsic attributes were the only things that mattered would predict that the same outcome would pertain every time. By contrast, cumulative advantage would predict that even identical universes, starting out with the same set of people and objects and tastes, would nevertheless generate different cultural or marketplace winners. [...] Likewise, the success of Harry Potter, Facebook, and The Hangover would turn out to be a product of chance and timing as well as intrinsic quality.

>In real life, however, we only have one world--the one that we are living in--thus it's impossible to make the sort of "between world" comparisons that the models say we should. It may not surprise you, therefore, that when someone uses the output of a simulation model to argue that Harry Potter may not be as special as everyone thinks it is, Harry Potter fans tend not to be persuaded. Common sense tells us that Harry Potter must be special--even if the half dozen or so children's book publishers who passed on the original manuscript didn't know it at the time--because more than 350 million people bought it. And because any model necessarily makes all manner of simplifying assumptions, whenever we have to choose between questioning common sense and questioning a model, we do the latter.

As you have done. Something must have been done to get Flappy Bird to go viral. Something must have been done to "get people to see it and share it." But what? Nothing repeatable--Nguyen has not repeated his success, nor have any other indie developers achieved success by repeating Nguyen's steps, whatever they might have been.

What was done to get people to see it and share it? Nothing. It was luck. Or, more accurately, it was luck generated by cumulative advantage.

One might argue that PewDiePie's influence helped generate Fappy Bird's popularity, but this, too, is a fallacy which Watts addresses. I won't type all of that out, but there's examination of how social networks function and react to influencers. But to sum up:

>As with all commonsense explanations, it sounds reasonable and it might be right. But in claiming that "X happened because a few special people made it happen," we have effectively replaced one piece of circular reasoning with another.

There's nothing special about Flappy Bird to make it popular. Nothing unique was done to get people to see it and share it. Its success was merely a random product of circumstance. I know it doesn't seem that way, but the nice thing about the truth is that it's true whether or not we believe it.

I know this sub is generally more focused on video game design over board game design, but I think there are a lot of crossover principals that are simply core to board game design that should be kept in mind or considered when approaching new game design.

In the book Kobold Guide to Board Game Design, Richard Garfield, probably best known as the designer of Magic: The Gathering but has a very impressive catalog generally, has a chapter where he talks about how the best way to be a better designer is to simply play as many games as possible.

In having a broad exposure to games, it helps you understand why a certain genre or game mechanism might be popular or effective. This helps to establish what type of styles you might want to emulate as well as create a resource you can fall back on if you get stuck in a certain aspect of the game's design.

As far as finding things to help spur other creative ideas such as art direction or theme, having a wide range of things you read, watch, or just browse in terms of more standard art can help spark new ideas. Jamey Stegmaier's board game Scythe was inspired when he stumbled across some art by Jakub Rozalski. I even believe another game is being made based off of Jakub's horror work. There are some very creative people just sort of posting things all around the internet that can serve as resources for getting new theme ideas.

The biggest thing to remember I think is that your first few designs are probably not going to be great. That's ok. It's part of the learning process.

Finally, going back to the video game vs board game thing I mentioned up top, if you play primarily video games it would probably be a good idea to branch out and start playing some more modern board games. There are a plethora of amazing games out there that can really help broaden your horizons when thinking about games in general. Additionally, playing video game genres outside of your typical comfort zone can help inspire new approaches to whatever you might be trying to accomplish.

These books are more theoretical and about self growth as a well-rounded designer, if you want game theory others listed some great ones like Rules of Play and Book of Lenses. That said, here's my list:

• Level Design For Games: Creating Compelling Game Experiences by Phil Co (Valve)
  
  It's more of a broad game design book since it talks about all the pipelines / processes of all departments coming together, with an emphasis on scripting / level design for crafting experiences. Portion of the book uses Unreal Engine 2 as a reference, but you can probably use UE4 or something else to follow along the actual game design lessons he's teaching and not have the take away be a technical tutorial.
  
  
• Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull (Pixar)
  
  I cannot describe how invaluable this book is, if you're only to get one from the list it'd be this one. While it does covers Pixar's history as a frame of reference for a lot of stuff, it's also more importantly about their ideology for fostering creativity, productivity and work/ life balance -- all of which are important and can be applied to Game Design.
  
  
• Peopleware by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister.
  
  I read this one after Gabe Newell recommended it one of his interviews and it was at a time in my career when I was working at a AAA studio struggling with the corporate forces that got in the way of creativity / productivity. It was one of those that changed me as a developer. It's more from a management point of view, but seriously applicable if you are collaborating with other people in game development, either on the same level as you or those who rely on your work to do theirs. Or if you are going to work at studio, AAA or indie, it's also an insightful book to evaluate whether the culture cultivated by management is in your best interest so that you have the tools to do your best work without burning out.
  
  
• Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson (Basecamp / Ruby on Rails)
  
  This one is like Peopleware but not as exhaustive, it's an easier read since it's a compilation and edit of blog posts the authors wrote on their old website 37signals. It's more or less about getting stuff done and filtering out noise, simplifying things to make results better -- this one is relatable for planning game project milestones. A lot of it will sound like common sense that a lot of people may say they already know, but it's surprising how many don't actually practice it.

I have a copy of the cards; they're not super helpful and are pretty massively overpriced imo. The book doesn't handle player psychology in a very rigorous way (and there's only one chapter on it) but I'm probably a lot more picky about that than most people.

I haven't read it yet but Glued to Games looks pretty good coming from authors with a bit more experience in psychology. Their work is on the motivational aspect of game playing: why people play games and how some games satisfy their intrinsic needs better than others. The basic argument is that "fun" or "engagement" are outcomes of need satisfaction.

Other than that though I think there's not much work applying psychology to game design directly. A Theory of Fun is based on pop-psych and (in my opinion) a questionable understanding of cognitive science, but it's a fun read at least.

In terms of blogs this one is good:www.psychologyofgames.com although it's mostly focused on phenomena around games (sales, reception, player attitudes) rather than the act of playing itself. This blog reviews recent academic literature in psychology (and a few other fields) related to games.

If you're really interested you'd probably be best served picking up an introductory psych textbook (I like Gleitman's) and picking out the sections that are most relevant to what you're interested in. I could give you more specific topics or books to look into if you have a particular part of player psychology you're interested in.

You can find a lot of art and music for free, just need to do some checking into the attribution requirements. My favorite site for this is opengameart.org.
That plus a Unity3D free (unity3d.com) and you should be ready to go.
Make sure to learn the C# way of doing things for the games, since most of the good plugins will be written in C#
I taught myself the programming aspects of it through youtube, google, and the scripting api.
I've only put out one minor game so far, and got some help on the art, but it wasn't too hard.
The hard part comes in when you want to have servers or interact with other APIs, then you are looking at a longer commitment and much more tweeking, since you have more than one debug point.
Start early on the habit of using state machines (http://jessewarden.com/2012/07/finite-state-machines-in-game-development.html). The first game you make will probably be a lot of spaghetti, but making a few really quickly, then starting over will help you understand a lot more about it.
for design i'd recommend Level Up! (http://www.amazon.com/Level-Up-Guide-Great-Design/dp/047068867X) as it is really good at explaining the why of game design as well as the mechanics.
Lastly, don't be afraid of copying something at first, there is always a game like the one you are making. Put something together that you, and your friends, enjoy then try something a bit more novel next time. You won't make the next great thing on your first try.

Okay, here are 4 suggestions about theory. There are plenty more, but these are a few of my favourites.

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals

• Chunky theory book and one of my favourites. Also has a companion book of essays
  
  Characteristics of Games
  
  
• Really nice combination of chapters from various designers (including Richard Garfield of MtG) looking into different aspects of design.
  
  Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design
  
  
• All about systems and how resources move through them in games and the affect that has.
  
  Theory of Fun for Game Design
  
  
• Easy to read, nicely illustrated and conveys a powerful fundamental idea for game design.
  
  Good luck and happy reading.
  

Starting out is an awesome advantage; not yet set in your ways you can find your own style.

While it is true some complex styles can take a lot of time, pixel art can be super simple and often less is more - like lessmilks's games

Working from something is easier than all at once so keep iterating - i.e. start with your current squares and add just squash and stretch to anticipate motion, or eyes to indicate move direction.

Pedro Medeiros has some great pixel art tutorial gifs

An free browser based sprite editor

Using a dedicated program with layers, pallettes and lighting control makes it much easier - this list of pixel art programs might help (Asesprite is great)

At the other extreme if you need lots of animation use a pixel art shader for blender3D
Or use some of the multitude of Free and Open Source pixel art at OpenGameArt and mod it for your needs.

Submit your stuff to /r/pixelart and request constructive criticism.

The Animator's Survival Kit is a great book (& on youtube)on the art of making drawings come alive as is The illusion of life

Look at spritesheets to see how others break animation down into frames.

Jan Willem of Vlambeer has a great talk on tricks to 'juice up your games'

First off, read anything by Carl Jung. His theories on archetypes and the collective unconscious form the groundwork upon which not only games, but the entire modern entertainment industry are built.

Basically Jung argues that there is a collective set of symbols and ideas that all humans, regardless of culture or upbringing will respond to. Understanding these symbols, and building your game around them - either as mechanics or story - allows you to influence how the player will respond.

Jung: A Very Short Introduction is a pretty easy way to get started. After you read that I'd suggest getting into the meat of Jung's own words with The Portable Jung (coincidentally edited by Joseph Campbell)

And with that, you should also read The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. He takes Jung's ideas, and shows the specific symbols used in the Hero's Journey - one of the most common story types. People talk about the Hero's Journey all the time - but it's a really important concept to understand if you're doing any sort of creative works. Here are two quick video primers on it:

A more serious one: Ted Ed: What Makes a Hero

A more awesome one: Glove and Boots: The Hero's Journey :)

If you want to go further on the narrative route I'd also suggest The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. He takes the Hero's Journey and shows how it is just one of several different plot archetypes, all of which have their own internal path, rules, and idiosyncrasies.

Now, in case you're thinking "Why are you sharing these books about narrative with me? Games are not stories!" remember that people have been responding to stories for all time - and good storytellers are masters at making people feel the desired emotion at the desired time.

Therefore I'd also direct you to Story By Robert McGee as well as Poetics by Aristotle. Both of these books look at story in a mechanical sense, and explain the precise methods storytellers (both ancient Greek ones and modern Hollywood ones) use to evoke emotions in the audience. These principles almost directly translate to game design.

After that I'd suggest looking at Chris Crawford's list of books all game designers should read. Unfortunately I can't find a copy of the list on the internet, but it's at the end of his book Chris Crawford on Game Design

There are quite a few good book on this topic, that I would recommend, like Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design, or Justin Gary's Think like a Game Designer. These books describe the process way better than I ever could, but I'll try anyway.From my personal experience I always start from an idea (hey, wouldn't moving fortresses be awesome?), then I start to think about what exactly fascinates me about that idea. Then I try to capture the awsomeness in game mechanics. From there I create a list of what has to be done to test the mechanics, do that (plus some eye-candy because I'm a visual person) so I have something to test. When I have something to test, I try to analyze what doesn't work and fix that (not in code, but in paper). And start the process again.

So basically once I have an idea, it's this loop of creating/refining mechanics, implementing them, then testing and analyzing them. Then I go back to refining.

If you often suffer from scope creep, there are several methods to battle that. Like setting yourself a deadline, always cutting a mechanic when you add a new one, etc. Don't be afraid to throw something out (it's not lost you can use the idea/mechanic in another project). A game is way better when it knows what it wants to be and throws away everything that doesn't contribute to that core experience (I mean they could add RPG elements to Call Of Duty Campaigns, but they don't because that's not what the game is about).

Also if you don't like your code, that's 100% normal. when you look back at something you've made, you'll always be able to spot something that you would do differently now. That's because you've learned new things since you started . I'm programming for nearly a decade now, and when I look back at code that I've written a few months ago I'm always like "Eww, why would anyone write code like that?". So don't be afraid to make mistakes and don't continuously refactor code. Make something, learn from it and do it better next time.

I hope that helps!

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EDIT: spelling

Do you have an understanding of what Game Design actually is?

Edit: So, about the things in promissed in the responsed below.

Design
Design Thinking

Universal Principles of Design book

"Design" comprehend a set of methodologies and "ways of thinking" specifically designed (lol) to identify opportunities and approach the creation of solutions in an objective manner. Being objective means that the process of design, its tools and concepts, allow for the effectiveness of the design to be measured and iterated upon. Every design is created to be enjoyed by people in a functional manner in their lives. Meaning that people will interact with said design, instead of just appreciated from a distance.
Every discipline of design (graphic design, industrial design, software design, game design and so on…) will share the same fundamentals that will guide the mindset of designing. Then obviously every discipline will have it’s own specific characteristics and differences that have been discovered and studied over the years, but the fundamentals are the same.
Once you internalize these design process, making a game on your own or inside a big company becomes the same thing, because it will follow the same procedures. The "fun" will be on the process, and not on the result.

Practical Creativity by Ralph Koster it's an example of using this mindset to game design. His website has a good amount of essays on the subject. Jesper Juul is another great reference on the field.

Honestly, I don't know of any good resources that focus on designing strategy games specifically. Unfortunately every book on "game design" is addressing "all of interactive entertainment" so it's hard to get anything really concrete down. I mean, I guess I could recommend my own book FULL DISCLOSURE, I wrote it, haha.

Also maybe a book called Game Mechanics - Advanced Game Design by E. Adams.

Other than that, I'd perhaps recommend going to Boardgamegeek, learning about boardgames as much as you can, and reading their game design section perhaps.

> What software is good for an absolute beginner.

Pen and paper. Begin designing board and card games to get a better feel for the mechanics. You can make them out of anything, playtest, iterate, get immediate feedback.

> What is the process of actually designing a game.

This is my number 1 recommendation for the steps to design an analog game.

You can also start with building blocks. Prototype different mechanics to get a feel for how things work, to expand your knowledge, increase your skill, and go from there.

There are plenty of worker-placement PC games, they just tend not to be very geographic unless they are RTSes. Artist Colony is one of my favorite examples of the type of PC game where you have to focus on producing the right workers needed to solve the game's main challenges.

https://www.amazon.com/I-play-40409Artist-Colony-Artist-Download/dp/B00403MYK2

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But, if you want something more like Civ, you could try the Heroes of Might and Magic series, it's a lot like a tabletop miniatures game.

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Or perhaps something like Rebuild 3 is more what you are looking for?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/257170/

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Oh, and it's not a worker placement game, but Card Hunter is a very geographic, very literal board game adapted as a PC game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/293260/

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1592535879/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For general design

and for games

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1539103188/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

also to your question, advanced game design is knowing more than 1 discipline. This is very common with Level Deisgners because they need to be able to touch everything a little bit. Generally speaking, if you can open most programs and work around a little, you will make peoples lives easier when you get to your job (if you're a LD). Other jobs can be different, if you write code, chances are that's all you will be doing, but still - a coder who can also animate - well you got yourself a tech animator and you are now worth way more to the team.

Level Up! by Scott Rogers - a great look at adventure game design.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/047068867X?pc_redir=1410179486&robot_redir=1

There is no single "way" to write for games. Every company and in some places even different teams in the same company will have different tools and processes for writing games.

It's also a hard thing to break into specifically, because at most companies either a game designer (who also does things like level design, systems design, game balancing, etc.) or a producer do the writing. Some contract writing out, though, so it's not unheard of.

You may get some value out of Making Fun: How to Score a Career in the Video Game Industry.

I've felt this way for years. I would recommend that you read: Think Like a Game Designer.

The author talks about the mindset issue of ego & uncertainty, and how you overcome it. He also talks about the development process, and where your focus should be with every iteration.

I've read a lot of books on the topic, and this one has truly been the most practical one.

If you want to make interesting mechanical game i suggest you Clockwork Game Design from Keith Burgun

In this discussion i wrote some more information and links.

Highly recommend Clockwork Gamedesign

For an examination of game design at its core, I'd recommend The Rules of Play

http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Play-Game-Design-Fundamentals/dp/0262240459/

I would offer caution about going "too big" on your first outing. Pick your tool to build your first game (or even just mod an existing game) and try to create something small.

And if you just want to prototype rapidly, I was using Scratch for a while before I got up to speed on Unity (http://scratch.mit.edu/) even though I hate visual scripting languages...

Yeah, the book is called Chris Crawford On Game Design. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0131460994/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1483563082&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=On+game+design&dpPl=1&dpID=517ReMCaAlL&ref=plSrch

I don't have time to type up the list sitting at my desk, but I'll do it at home tonight.

The Illusion of Life