Moving from Design to Production - Practice - Games, Design and Play: A detailed approach to iterative game design (2016)

Games, Design and Play: A detailed approach to iterative game design (2016)

Part III: Practice

Chapter 13. Moving from Design to Production

The first time through the iterative game design cycle isn’t the end of the game design process—it is just the beginning. How many times a game needs to move through the process differs from game to game and team to team. And knowing when the design phase is finished is not always easy to determine. In this chapter we look at some of the diverse ways game designers move through the iterative process and think about the ways to tell when the design is complete.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”1

1 From Beckett’s novel, Worstward Ho, 1983.

These words of wisdom from Samuel Beckett sum up the most important lesson iteration teaches us—creativity is more about failure than it is success. That’s the power of iterative design—it is a set of processes that embrace failure, and in time, use failure as the raw materials for creating good games. When we use the iterative cycle, we are posing a question that we theorize during the conceptualizing phase, we give form to during the prototyping phase, we answer during the playtesting phase, and we interpret during the evaluation phase. This leads to the next question, and thus, the next iterative loop. Sometimes these loops are trying again and again to answer the same question. Sometimes an iterative loop satisfactorily answers the question, and so the next iterative loop can move on to a different aspect of the game.

While the phases of conceptualize, prototype, playtest, and evaluate are pretty universal, there are many different ways to approach how the cycles of iteration actually play out. To show this range—including a case where the iterative approach is barely used at all—we have four case studies demonstrating different approaches to the iterative game design process. Each of the four examples shows how different the iterative process can be depending on the design values, the kind of technological tools used, and most importantly, the kind of play experience the gamemakers wanted to provide. These include Local No. 12’s The Metagame, Die Gute Fabrik’s Johann Sebastian Joust, Tale of Tales’ The Path, and anna anthropy’s Queers in Love at the End of the World.

Case Study: The Metagame

The Metagame (see Figure 13.1), a party game we both worked on, took many trips around the iterative cycle, in the process becoming several very different final games—from a game show to a conference game to a party game to an art project and finally, back to a party game. Originating in a design for an MTV game show by Frank Lantz and Eric Zimmerman, The Metagame became a game platform of sorts, leading to a new life as it exists now, a party game by Local No. 12, our company with Eric Zimmerman. Our first redesign of the original idea was to create a collectible card game for the 2011 Game Developers Conference (GDC). We wanted to create a game that fit naturally into the kinds of activities already present at GDC. One thing all of us had noticed was that people spent a lot of time between conference sessions and late into the evenings debating the merits of different videogames. So we looked for a way to develop a game around this already-present behavior. We spent about six months iterating on the gameplay, the art direction, the wording on the rules, and even how we would distribute the cards to conference attendees. We ran playtests at our respective schools, at small conferences and with small groups of friends—any opportunity we could find, really. The efforts paid off, as the conference game version of The Metagame caught on at GDC, with more than 3,000 people playing by the end of the conference.

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Figure 13.1 A sampling of The Metagame prototypes created over the years.

At the end of the week, we launched a Kickstarter campaign to produce a full deck that we released a year later. This required a lot more than just taking the existing cards and packaging them in a box. The conference play sessions proved to be a large-scale playtest for us, allowing us to learn all sorts of things about the information on the cards, the approach to images, the kinds of conversations that emerged from the cards, and so on. All this informed the revisions we made to the game. We also had to rethink the game and its content to fit different play contexts. Instead of playing in conference halls and bars, we now had to design for living rooms, classrooms, and other spaces. We revised the basic game structure and began adding new play modes that were more conducive to smaller groups and contexts. This led to a period of tight iterative loops around the play modes and how they were captured in the rules booklet. While this was going on, we worked on new card ideas and illustrations.

After launching the boxed version of The Metagame Videogame Edition, we were approached to do a project for the art magazine Esopus. We decided to create another version of The Metagame, this time expanding the content from videogames to all kinds of culture—from film to fashion, literature to fine art, and beyond. This led to a new phase of iteration around broadening the content, but also making sure the play modes made sense to the new audience as well as rethinking the size of the cards and how they might be bound into a magazine.

The response from Esopus readers was great, so again, we gained the courage to run another Kickstarter campaign to release a boxed version with the broader range of content. The current version has ten games you can play with the deck—like a traditional deck of cards where you can play anything from poker to go fish. As with the previous versions, we iterated content and the games you can play with the deck hundreds of times, first using index cards and then working with a small-run Internet printer for a more genuine card feel. We also playtested with various age groups and cultural backgrounds, trying to get a good mix of content in the game that could appeal to an intergenerational audience—your family, after a holiday meal. Much of the content was inspired by these playtests, as people naturally recommended this or that television show, fashion design, or art piece.2

2 For a more detailed look at the iteration on the game’s visual design, see John’s essay, “How the Metagame Cards Went from a Sports Card-Like to Dictionary Chic.” www.heyimjohn.com/metagame-card-design/. 2015.

The Metagame, then, was an iterative process that spanned five years and involved different content, audiences, and forms. While the play modes, audiences, and content changed, the primary goal of the game—provide a playful structure for talking about pop culture—never wavered. Staying focused on this goal allowed us to have a clear set of goals for each successive version of the game and helped us maintain the spirit of the play experience even when almost everything else changed.

Case Study: Johann Sebastian Joust

Another party game, Johann Sebastian Joust (see Figure 13.2), had a decidedly faster path to completed design. In fact, the core play experience evolved over just 48 hours during the 2011 Nordic Game Jam. Despite this fast design process, Douglas Wilson, the game’s designer, describes the process as one with roots in a much longer exploration of motion-sensitive controllers. Douglas and his colleagues learned some valuable lessons experimenting with motion controllers that, at the time, may have felt like failed projects, but in the end, were just the right experimentation to help Douglas create J.S. Joust. The technical experience and knowledge of how motion-sensitive controllers could be used found its way to the game jam, with the interest in creating a game that emphasized player interaction without the mediation of the screen—a videogame without video. The discovery of the core game came from experimentation with the technology during the jam, with a focus on making a game that was multiplayer and used music as a core element instead of visuals on a screen.

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Figure 13.2 Johann Sebastian Joust. Photo by Elliot Trinidad. Used with permission of the IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games.

The original intent was to try to create a racing game, where players would need to race in slow-motion so they wouldn’t jostle their controllers. As Douglas and his collaborators were testing the sensitivity of the controllers, a happy accident occurred. He describes it:

“The breakthrough moment soon followed when Nils and I happened to find ourselves walking towards one another from opposite sides of the room. Staring at one another, face-to-face, each of us silently hatched the same mischievous plan; as soon as we were in range, we shoved one another in an attempt to make the other lose. In that one instant, it became clear to us that the game we actually wanted to make was one that involved an antagonistic duel. In a certain sense, it is debatable whether I even “designed” J.S. Joust. As I see it, Nils and I pulled the game out of the social ether, collaboratively.”3

3 Excerpted from page 120 of Doug Wilson’s PhD thesis, “Designing for the Pleasures of Disputation—or—How to Make Friends by Trying to Kick Them!”, 2012.

This is a great example of how design and playtesting are intertwined, and often, how one might simply start playing with a technology to find the fun in the game. Douglas calls this approach “toy-centric” design. By exploring the play potential of a new piece of technology, motion controllers, Douglas sought out a way to turn those controllers into a toy around which to build a game. By serendipitously homing in on players simultaneously balancing their own controller while trying to jostle that of their opponents, Douglas and his collaborator had found that perfect toy around which to design a game. In the ensuing 24 hours, Douglas coded up the core play experience.

For a couple years, the game remained more or less the same—a game that required setup and oversight by Douglas or someone else who could provide the basic instruction and technical support to run the game—in some cases, up to 16 players, each with their own controller. These events became playtests for the core game, as Douglas was more often than not there to set up and run the game. This allowed small refinements to the play and the game software.

Several years later, J.S. Joust was released on the PlayStation in the local multiplayer compilation Sportsfriends, with much the basic design developed during that initial 48 hours. Of course, it wasn’t as easy as simply porting the code from the game jam to work on the PlayStation platform. Changes to the technology (from Wiimote to PS Move controller) and subtle refinements in player feedback were implemented, as was building an infrastructure for players to be able to run the game for themselves. The biggest challenges came in the development of a stand-alone system for people to run the game themselves. This required the development of an interface and menu system for teaching players how to play and to walk them through the setup of the game. Designing and implementing this took two years, an order of magnitude longer than the initial design.

With J.S. Joust, we see a game that seemed to come together almost by magic in a short period of time. The reality, though, is that the year or more of experimentation around motion controls before the game jam and the two-plus years of design and development of a stand-alone version of the game afterwards were equally important. So while the Hollywood version of the J.S. Joust story might focus on those first 48 hours, the reality is that it took four years to create, despite that moment of design clarity at the Nordic Game Jam.

Case Study: The Path

Tale of Tales’ The Path took a very different approach to iteration than the previous two examples. Instead of starting with an idea around gameplay or an interest in finding the fun in a piece of technology, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn began with a setting (a path in the forest), a story (Little Red Riding Hood), and a genre (horror). All of these design motivations came together in the process of writing a grant proposal to support the development of the game—funding being a constraint we hardly address in this book, but a real one, and part of any development process. The funding they received was modest, so they made a choice early on to use tools with which they were comfortable and an engine into which they had already put some work. A previous project, The Endless Forest, provided the environment rendering system, and a partially completed project, Drama Princess, was shifted to serve as the character behavior manager.

With a setting, story, genre, and tools sorted out, there was still a lot left to think through with the game. An important inspiration came from the music of Kris Force and Jarboe, the musicians they would work with to create the game’s soundtrack. Their music helped solidify the mood and emotional atmosphere that Auriea and Michaël wanted to capture in the game.

This is where The Path diverges from the previous examples (see Figure 13.3). To playtest the emotional effect of the game, its environments, art, and sound needed to be well developed. This meant it would be difficult to playtest without fairly advanced work already in place in modeling and texturing the environments and coding in the event sounds and score. So they focused early design cycles on creating a navigable world without much in the way of gameplay. Testing for emotional response sometimes involves bringing much of the art and media together in the prototype. Auriea and Michaël don’t always playtest with outside playtesters, but for The Path, one of the goals was to appeal to gamers and nongamers alike—and to do so, playtesting was the only way to determine whether that was working. In Figure 13.3, you will see how closely Auriea and Michaël observed their playtesters, with Auriea sketching players as they played through the game.

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Figure 13.3 A sketch drawn by Auriea Harvey of a playtester for The Path.

The engine they used to create the game, Quest 3D, also provided an unusual twist in the iterative process, blurring the lines between prototyping and playtesting due to the “live coding” nature of the development environment. If the behavior of a character was modified, it happened in real time, as if they were living beings inside the world with shifting motivations. A tweak to the color of the sky, or the scale of the flora would immediately take place, shifting other elements in the environment along with it. So in essence, while they were prototyping the game, Auriea and Michaël were also playtesting it—playing in a world and making changes to it in real time, similar to the way one might play with dolls. This allowed for a very fluid movement between playable prototyping and internal playtesting. Indeed, the process allowed for a lot of design decisions emerging from Auriea and Michaël’s playtesting.

Eventually, after much internal and external playtesting of the fully realized game world, gameplay emerged. They created a series of adventure-game style puzzles and object collection goals that they designed and implemented. The gameplay changed radically after they heard the completed soundtrack by Kris Force and Jarboe. Auriea and Michaël realized that the game actions and the music didn’t quite go together. So they removed many of the small puzzle-solving tasks they had designed and made the game more about exploration and discovery.

This is a great example of sticking with your design values: having a sense of the kind of emotional tones you want your game to generate and being willing to “kill your babies” when it’s just not working. The iterative process of The Path is one that we probably wouldn’t recommend to our students for their first game. Taking so long to get to a playable prototype and playtest can involve spending many hours of art production work that ends up on the cutting room floor. But, by the time The Path project started, Auriea and Michaël had clocked thousands of hours in previous projects that fed into the development process and helped them gauge scope. So while we would say, “don’t try this at home,” we think that this is an exceptional example of designing for emotional effect and being true to design values.

Case Study: Queers in Love at the End of the World

The final case study is anna anthropy’s Twine game Queers in Love at the End of the World (see Figure 13.4). Though an experienced game designer, able to work in a variety of development environments herself, anna was attracted to the low barrier-to-entry of Twine—the tool allows pretty much anyone with access to a computer and basic English language literacy to create games. It was important to anna to create her Twine games without having to resort to any programming or visual design work so that her games could serve as models for aspiring gamemakers. This established one important design value for the game—showcasing the accessibility of Twine as a game creation tool.

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Figure 13.4 Screenshot from Queers in Love at the End of the World.

A little earlier, anna encountered S. Astrid Bin’s Twine game PANIC!, which had an interesting feature—a timer on all player decisions. anna thought this was a clever way to add challenge to the game, as it pushed on the core action of all Twine games—reading comprehension. Since the feature required programming, anna tucked away the idea for later use.

At some point, someone released an open source code snippet for adding timers in Twine, so anna felt it was okay for her to make use of it in a game. With this in hand, anna saw that an upcoming Ludum Dare challenge was creating a 10-second game. (Ludum Dares are 48-hour game jams, each centered around a theme.) This inspired anna to find a use for the Twine timer. Though she didn’t participate in the Ludum Dare, she decided she would create a game that lasted 10 seconds—a great example of designing around constraint! She also decided she wanted the game to use the time constraint to create a social pressure rather than a test of skill or puzzle-solving. anna was in a long-distance relationship at the time and felt she never had enough time with her partner. She began thinking about how she was always in a position of having to make the most of the time she had, which led her to have to make decisions about what she really needed when with her partner and what she was able to give her partner in return.

From there, she came up with the game’s theme: a queer couple with only 10 seconds together before the world ends. She quickly came up with the first set of choices in the branching structure of Twine: “kiss her, hold her, take her hand, tell her.” She then began working on the paths that emerged from the “kiss her” choice. Each choice begat more choices, until anna found herself writing hundreds of decision points. The game’s poetic feel in part comes from the raw, impulsive nature of each decision point and the increasing franticness as the short time passes. To help maintain this feeling, anna kept her editing to a minimum, only revising decision points that didn’t feel quite right or in the spirit of her own experiences as a queer woman.

Because the game was so much about a sense of urgency but also her own feelings about the pressures of time on love, playtesting differed from previous examples. anna focused the playtesting on making sure there were no technical problems such as the timer not always working or dead links in the branching narrative. anna was not looking for ideas for making the game better or input on adding content to the game. She simply wanted to make sure the game was playable as she designed it.

anna’s concepting, design, and playtesting certainly unfolded over a period of months, but it lacks the cycle of loops the other case studies used as part of their design. Queers in Love at the End of the World only tangentially fits into the ideas of iterative game design as captured in this book. This is why we’ve used it as the final case study—to point out that not all games require a full iterative process to be created. In the same way it was important to anna to use Twine in a way that someone with game design or programming experience might, so too is it important to point out that a deep knowledge of iterative processes isn’t a requirement for making games. In the same light, having the time and resources to devote to the iterative design process is not something that can be assumed. Sometimes all we have is a short period of time to work on a game.

How to Know When the Design Is Done

As the chapters in Part III, “Practice,” make pretty clear, the iterative design process is one that takes a lot of time, patience, and energy. But it is also just the beginning: it is the design of the game. There is still another phase to go: production. Production is when the game’s design, technical planning, and other related preparatory work is complete and what is left is building the final game. It’s true, the team has likely already built the game a number of times during the design process through the repeated loops of the iterative cycle. But that was all in the service of conceptualizing, prototyping, playtesting, and evaluating the game’s design. It wasn’t about building a solid, stress-tested piece of software.

The rule of iterative design is fail faster. During iteration, the team is thinking about the final game but avoids getting hung up on doing things right. You know you will fail, so why waste time trying to make everything perfect? But in production, the opposite is true. Things have to be just right to keep them from failing—the team must create bullet-proof server code for handling the Internet traffic in some games or debugging collision detection code to withstand all the things players will try in others.

This brings up one of the more challenging aspects of game design—knowing when to phase out of iteration and design and into production. What are some signs that it’s time to move into production? How does the team know when to stop building and testing prototypes and start building the final game that people will see and play?

Image Complete game prototype: For one, the team has made at least one complete game prototype. This should include all of the game’s features, including the core gameplay, interface elements like the menus, scores and buttons in the game, the art direction, and sound direction. In other words, all of the elements that make up the experience are decided on and locked.

Once a fully tested complete game prototype has been tested, it should be pretty clear what issues remain open. There are no forks in the road ahead around big design decisions. There shouldn’t be any difficult decisions about the sound or visuals, and there won’t be questions about which platform the game will be published on. What’s left is to simply complete the unfinished elements in your game.

Image Playtesting: Knowing whether or not the complete game prototype is proving out the game’s design takes plenty of playtesting and refinement. To really be certain, the team will have tested with people from your target audience. Their feedback is the litmus test for the game and how close it is to expressing the design values. New player and experienced player playtests are also really helpful. The new player playtests help you understand the learnability of your game. The experienced player playtests let you know the game holds up to repeated plays, that it doesn’t lose its fun or become too easy to master over repeated plays.

Image Art direction: Another important consideration is the visual and sound design of the game. The team has examples of the direction for the art and sound. This doesn’t mean all the assets are created. For example, if the game has a lot of different types of dinosaurs, this might mean a few sample dinosaurs are already designed, like a stegosaurus, a velociraptor, a pterodactyl, but the team has only placeholder art for the tyrannosaurus rex, the brontosaurus, and the triceratops. Once the team tests all of the dinosaur code and their interactions in the game, there is still work remaining to the final models, textures, and so on. This is production.

Image Code: The team has all of the code written and tested in the complete game prototype, but there might be some optimizing to do, some cleaning up and making sure it’s well commented, and of course there will be work to integrate the final art and sound assets. There will be some final testing to do to squash any bugs in the code. It is often a wise decision to step back and create a plan for the final software that will guide the production. By creating diagrams of how the code works, how the various libraries interact, it is likely that the team will find ways to really optimize the code and make production time faster than it would otherwise be.

Image Text: If there’s any writing in the game, most of it will be written and tested in the complete game prototype, but you’ll want to make final edits and check for accuracy and continuity.

Image Design values: The team will have reviewed the complete game prototype against the design values. How close is the complete game prototype in realizing the design values? When players playtest the complete game prototype, is it hitting all the design values? Is there anything that could be added or taken away from the game to express those values more strongly and cleanly?

Image Documentation: One of the clearest indications that a game is ready to move from design into production is when the game design document and accompanying schematics capture the full experience of the game. These should serve as the blueprints for production, including detailed information on the visual and sound production requirements of the game, and accurate schematics for interfaces and menus.

If you’ve hit all these points, then the team is probably ready to move out of iteration into production.

Getting Ready for Production

Once the team is ready to move out of the iterative cycle of concepting, prototyping, playtesting, and evaluation and into final production on the game, the team will want to create a production plan. The production process can be a real slog if not prepared for properly. The honeymoon phase of the design process is over. All the interesting decisions in the process have been made, and now it’s just time to get it done.

Once the game design document, schematics, or any other materials are reviewed and up-to-date, the next step is planning out production. This is often handled by creating a new version of the task tracking spreadsheet discussed in Chapter 7, “Game Design Documentation.”

Who is going to be part of the production team? It will likely be the same people who were part of the design process. But if you need any special skills, like someone to come in and help you do tasks that don’t involve creative decisions, like resizing graphics or copyediting final text, you should bring them on.

Once you have the who of your production team figured out, it’s time to identify and write down what they will be doing (see Figure 13.5). For Ping! we’ve been keeping a document to keep track of what we need to accomplish for our prototypes and who will do them. We also identify if there were any “dependencies,” or tasks that can’t be accomplished without another one being finished first.

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Figure 13.5 A production spreadsheet.

Finally, as with any task, having clear deadlines is essential. Identify who is doing what by when. Without deadlines, nothing would get done. You will probably need to adjust deadlines as the team goes, especially for your first few games. It’s human nature to underestimate the amount of time it takes to get something done. Try multiplying time estimates by 2 (that works for John), and then adjust this number as needed. Whatever formula, do try to set some deadlines in the process.

In addition to deadlines, you should set regular meetings with the team. While it seems like there’s not much more to discuss because all of the open questions in the design process have been answered, there are still going to be things that come up and need the team’s attention.

Regular meetings, whether they’re weekly or more frequent, also keep you honest. How much did you accomplish in the past week? If there’s nothing to report, that’s a pretty clear indicator that you need to set aside more time to work on the game.

Considering the who, what, and when in your production process, and keeping track of these, will help you get to the finish line with your game. It’s probably going to involve a lot of work and some late nights, but the reward of seeing your game out in the world getting played makes it all worth it.

Summary

All of the videogames we’ve talked about in this series were developed by small teams or individuals. Making videogames is challenging, and it takes a lot of practice. Start small, and don’t be afraid of failure. It’s just part of the process. Iteration is the way to take just a small kernel of an idea and grow it into a game. It just so happens that learning how to make games is its own iterative loop. Dive in, make a game, put it out there, and then make another one. We look forward to playing them.

Your game design is complete, you are ready to stop iterating, and you are ready to move into production when you have

Image Created a complete game prototype

Image Successfully playtested with target audience members

Image Successfully playtested with new players

Image Successfully playtested with experienced players

Image Met your design values

Image Solid art direction

Image A strong code base for your target platform

Image Most of the final text for the game

Image An up-to-date game design document

Works Cited

Introduction

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Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Messhof, Nidhogg. Messhof (Steam), 2014.

Molleindustria, The McDonald’s Videogame. Molleindustria (browser game), 2006.

Ninja. Traditional street game.

Nintendo. Wii Sports, Nintendo (Nintendo Wii). 2006.

Pope, Lucas, Papers, Please. 3909 LLC (iOS), 2013.

Poker. Traditional cardgame.

Porpentine, Howling Dogs. Porpentine (browser game), 2012.

Sampat, Elizabeth, Deadbolt. Elizabeth Sampat (tabletop game), 2013.

Semi-Secret Software, Canabalt. Semi-Secret Software (iOS), 2009.

Sirvo LLC, Threes. Sirvo LLC (iOS), 2014.

Soccer. Traditional sport.

Squinkifer, Dietrich, Coffee: A Misunderstanding. Dietrich Squinkifer (performance game), 2014.

Tale of Tales, The Path. Tale of Tales (Macintosh), 2009.

Team Meat, Super Meat Boy. Team Meat (Xbox 360), 2010.

Thekla, Inc., The Witness. Number None, Inc. (PlayStation 4), 2016.

Uvula, Wild Rumpus and Venus Patrol, Tenya Wanya Teens. (arcade), 2013.

Valve Corporation, Portal. Valve Corporation (PlayStation 3), 2007.

Valve Corporation, Portal 2. Valve Corporation (PlayStation 3), 2011.

Chapter 4

anthropy, anna. “level design lesson: to the right, hold on tight.” Auntie Pixelante, 2009.

anthropy, anna. Queers in Love at the End of the World. (browser game), 2014.

Area/code, Drop7. Zynga (iOS), 2008.

Arkane Studios, Dishonored. Bethesda Softworks (PlayStation 3), 2012.

Bartle, Richard. “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs.” 1996.

Blendo Games, Thirty Flights of Loving. Blendo Games (Macintosh), 2012.

Burke, Liam. Dog Eat Dog. Liam Burke (tabletop roleplaying game), 2013.

Cater, John, Rob Dubbin, Eric Eve, Elizabeth Heller, Jayzee, Kazuki Mishima, Sarah Morayati, Mark Musante, Emily Short, Adam Thornton, and Ziv Wities. Alabaster. (Windows), 2009.

Chess. Traditional boardgame.

Crampton Smith, Gillian. “What Is Interaction Design?” in Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007.

Die Gute Fabrik, Johann Sebastian Joust. Die Gute Fabrik (PlayStation 3), 2013.

Fischer, Reece, “The Creation of Disneyland.” The Creation of Disneyland. N.p., 2004. Web. 14 Jan. 2013.

Friedhoff, Jane, Slam City Oracles. Jane Friedhoff (Macintosh), 2015.

Garfield, Richard, and Lukas Litzsinger, Android: Netrunner. Fantasy Flight Games (cardgame), 2012.

Garrett, Jesse James, The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond (2nd Edition). San Francisco, CA: New Riders, 2010.

Gilliam, Leah. Lesberation. (tabletop game), 2008, 2015.

Gygax, Gary, and Dave Arneson, Dungeons & Dragons. TSR (tabletop game), 1974.

Juul, Jesper, The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013.

Key, Ed, and David Kanaga, Proteus. Curve Digital (Steam), 2013.

Kopas, Merritt, Hugpunx. Merritt Kopas (browser game), 2013.

Lemarchand, Richard. “Attention, Not Immersion: Making Your Games Better with Psychology and Playtesting, the Uncharted Way,” Game Developers Conference 2011.

Messhof, Flywrench. Messhof (Steam), 2015.

Molleindustria, The McDonald’s Videogame. Molleindustria (browser game), 2006.

Naismith, James, Basketball. (sport), 1891.

Nintendo R&D4, Super Mario Bros. Nintendo (SNES), 1985.

Norman, Donald, The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Number None, Inc. Braid. Number None Inc. (Xbox 360), 2008.

Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action. New York: Free Press, 1967.

Porpentine, Howling Dogs. Porpentine (browser game), 2012.

Raskin, Jef. The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley Professional, 1994.

Romero, Brenda, Train. (installation game), 2009.

Schüoenfelder, Lea, and Peter Lu, Perfect Woman. Lea Schüoenfelder and Peter Lu (Macintosh), 2012.

Sharp, John. “Perspective,” in The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies. Ed. Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf. New York: Routledge, 2014.

Sirvo LLC, Threes. Sirvo LLC (iOS), 2014.

Tale of Tales, The Path. Tale of Tales (Macintosh), 2009.

Thatgamecompany. Journey. Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (videogame), 2012.

Ubisoft Montreal, Far Cry 2. Ubisoft (PlayStation 3), 2008.

USC Game Innovation Lab, Walden, a game. (Macintosh).

Valve Corporation, Portal 2. Valve Corporation (PlayStation 3), 2011.

Yu, Derek, Spelunky. Mossmouth, LLC (Xbox 360), 2008.

Chapter 5

Dreyfuss, Henry, Designing for People. NY: Simon and Shuster, 1955.

IDEO, Design Kit.

Shewhart, Andrew Walter, Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control. Washington, D.C.: The Graduate School, the Department of Agriculture, 1939.

Chapter 6

Atari, Inc., Pong. Atari, Inc. (arcade), 1972.

Bauza, Antoine, Hanabi. R & R Games Incorporated (cardgame), 2010.

Captain Games, Desert Golfing. Captain Games (iOS), 2014.

Chen, Jenova. “Designing Journey.” Game Developers Conference 2013.

Chen, Jenova, and Robin Hunicke, “Discovering Multiplayer Dynamics in Journey.” IndieCade 2010.

Clark, Naomi, Consentacle. Naomi Clark (cardgame), 2014.

Flanagan, Mary, and Helen Nissenbaum, Values at Play in Digital Games. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014.

Garfield, Richard, and Lukas Litzsinger, Android: Netrunner. Fantasy Flight Games (cardgame), 2012.

Holm, Ivar, Ideas and Beliefs in Architecture and Industrial Design: How Attitudes, Orientations, and Underlying Assumptions Shape the Built Environment. Oslo, Norway: Oslo School of Architecture and Design, 2006.

Sharp, John, “Design Values.” November 12, 2015.

Thatgamecompany. Journey. Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (videogame), 2012.

Zimmerman, Eric. “Play as Research: The Iterative Design Process” in Design Research: Methods and Perspectives. Ed. Brenda Laurel. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.

Chapter 7

Llopis, Noel. “Indie Project Management for One: Tools,” Games from Within. August 5, 2010. http://gamesfromwithin.com/indie-project-management-for-one-tools. Accessed January 29, 2016.

Chapter 8

anthropy, anna. Queers in Love at the End of the World. (browser game), 2014.

Burnett, Rebecca, Brandy Blake, Andy Freeze, Kathleen Hanggi, and Amanda Madden, WOVENText version 2.2. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2012.

Captain Games, Desert Golfing. Captain Games (iOS), 2014.

Hartnett, Tim. Consensus Decision-Making website.

Hunt, Jamer. “Among Six Types of Failure Only a Few Help You Innovate.” Fast Company. June 27, 2011.

Kniberg, Henrik, “Spotify Engineering Culture (part 1).” Spotify Labs website. March 27, 2014.

Kniberg, Henrik, “Spotify Engineering Culture (part 2).” Spotify Labs website. September 20, 2014.

Chapter 9

anthropy, anna, dys4ia. Auntie Pixelante (browser game), 2012.

anthropy, anna, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-Outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012.

Atari, Inc. Breakout. Atari, Inc. (arcade), 1976.

Bell, Chris. “Designing for Friendship: Shaping Player Relationships with Rules and Freedom.” Game Developers Conference 2012.

Cavanagh, Terry, vvvvvv. Distractionware (iOS), 2010.

Coco & Co., Way. Coco & Co (Macintosh), 2012.

Cooper, Alan, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. Boston, MA: Sams - Pearson Education, 2004.

Die Gute Fabrik, Johann Sebastian Joust. Die Gute Fabrik (PlayStation 3), 2013.

The Fullbright Company, Gone Home. Majesco Entertainment (Steam), 2013.

Granell, Craig. “The Weekend Read: How Canabalt Jumped from Indie Game Jam to the Museum of Modern Art.” Stuff website, June 12, 2015.

IDEO, Design Kit.

Meadows, Donella. Thinking in Systems: A Primer. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.

Molleindustria, McDonald’s Videogame. Molleindustria (browser game), 2006.

Osborn, Alex F., Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem-Solving. New York: Scribner, 1979.

Semi-Secret Software, Canabalt. Semi-Secret Software (iOS), 2009.

Thatgamecompany. Journey. Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (videogame), 2012.

Wilson, Douglas, Designing for the Pleasures of Disputation—or—How to Make Friends by Trying to Kick Them! PhD dissertation, 2012.

Wilson, Douglas. “The Unlikely Story of Johann Sebastian Joust.” GDC China 2012.

Chapter 10

Atari, Inc., Pong. Atari, Inc. (arcade), 1972.

Cancienne, Kevin, Dog Park. Kevin Cancienne (PC), 2014.

DeBonis, Josh, and Nikita Mikros, Killer Queen. Josh DeBonis and Nikita Mikros (arcade), 2013.

DeBonis, Josh, and Nikita Mikros, “Swords and Snails: The Killer Queen Story.” IndieCade East 2014.

Friedhoff, Jane, Slam City Oracles. Jane Friedhoff (Macintosh), 2015.

Harvey, Auriea. “The Making of Ruby.” The Path development blog, March 10, 2008.

Local No. 12, Losswords. Local No. 12 (iOS), 2016.

Schüoenfelder, Lea, and Peter Lu, Perfect Woman. Lea Schüoenfelder and Peter Lu (Macintosh), 2012.

Tale of Tales, The Path. Tale of Tales (Macintosh), 2009.

Thatgamecompany. Journey. Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (videogame), 2012.

Chapter 11

Cancienne, Kevin, Dog Park. Kevin Cancienne (PC), 2014.

Foddy, Bennett, FLOP. Die Gute Fabrik (PlayStation 3), 2013.

Hecker, Chris, Spy Party. Chris Hecker (PC).

Isbister, Katherine, How Games Move Us: Emotion by Design. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016.

Local No. 12, The Metagame. Local No. 12 (cardgame), 2015.

Chapter 13

anthropy, anna. Queers in Love at the End of the World. (browser game), 2014.

Beckett, Thomas, Worstward Ho. In Nohow On: Company, III Seen III Said, and Worstward Ho. New York: Grove Press, 2014.

Bin, Astrid, PANIC!. Astrid Bin (browser game), 2012.

Cardboard Computer, Kentucky Route Zero. Cardboard Computer (Steam), 2013-2014.

Esopus magazine.

Die Gute Fabrik, Johann Sebastian Joust. Die Gute Fabrik (PlayStation 3), 2013.

Die Gute Fabrik, Sportsfriends. Die Gute Fabric (PlayStation 4), 2013.

Local No. 12, The Metagame. Local No. 12 (cardgame), 2015.

Number None, Inc. Braid. Number None Inc. (Xbox 360), 2008.

Sharp, John. “How The Metagame Cards Went from a Sports Card-Like to Dictionary Chic.” April 16, 2015.

Tale of Tales, Drama Princess. Tale of Tales (software), 2006.

Tale of Tales, The Endless Forest, Tale of Tales (PC), 2005.

Tale of Tales, The Path. Tale of Tales (Macintosh), 2009.

Wilson, Douglas, Designing for the Pleasures of Disputation—or—How to Make Friends by Trying to Kick Them! PhD dissertation, 2012.