The Game Design Reader : A Rules of Play Anthology
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By Katie Salen (Editor), Eric Zimmerman (Editor)
Produced By The MIT Press
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Comprising thirty-two separate essays by game designers, game critics, game fans, philosophers, anthropologists, and media theorists, this first of its kind collection on game design and criticism looks at many of the fundamental questions that plague the industry today.

What are games and how are they designed? How do games interact with culture at large? What critical approaches can game designers take to create game stories, game spaces, game communities, and new forms of play?

Game journalists express the rhythms of game play, sociologists tackle topics such as role-playing in vast virtual worlds, players rant and rave, and game designers describe the sweat and tears of bringing a game to market.

The book is organised around fourteen topics, from The Player Experience to The Game Design Process, from Games and Narrative to Cultural Representation. Each topic, introduced with a short essay by Salen and Zimmerman, covers ideas and research fundamental to the study of games, and points to relevant texts within the Reader.