Video Game Design: Principles and Practices from the Ground Up

Video Game Design is a visual introduction to integrating core design essentials, such as critical analysis, mechanics and aesthetics, prototyping, level design, into game design.

Using a raft of examples from a diverse range of leading international creatives and award-winning studios, this is a must-have guide for budding game designers. Industry perspectives from game industry professionals provide fascinating insights into this creative field, and each chapter concludes with a workshop project to help you put what you've learnt into practice to plan and develop your own games.

With over 200 images from some of the best-selling, most creative games of the last 30 years, this is an essential introduction to industry practice, helping readers develop practical skills for video game creation. This book is for those seeking a career making video games as part of a studio, small team or as an independent creator. It will guide you from understanding how games engage, entertain and communicate with their audience and take you on a journey as a designer towards creating your own video game experiences.

Interviewees include:

James Portnow, CEO at Rainmaker Games
Brandon Sheffield, Gamasutra.com/Game Developer magazine
Steve Gaynor, co-founder The Fullbright Company (Gone Home)
Kate Craig, Environment Artist. The Fullbright Company (Gone Home)
Adam Saltsman, creator of Canabalt & Gravity Hook
Jake Elliott & Tamas Kemenczy, Cardboard Computer (Kentucky Route Zero)
Tyson Steele, User Interface Designer, Epic Games
Tom Francis, Game Designer, Gunpoint & Floating Point
Kareem Ettouney, Art Director, Media Molecule. Little Big Planet 1 & 2, Tearaway.
Kenneth Young, Head of Audio, Media Molecule
Rex Crowle, Creative Lead, Media Molecule

Michael Salmond, Digital Media Design, Florida Gulf Coast University, USA. Michael is a digital interaction designer, video game artist and digital theorist. His work has been exhibited and published nationally, internationally and online. He has been teaching video game design and interaction design for over ten years in the UK and the USA. He is the co-author of The Fundamentals of Interactive Design (2013).