What do you think?
Rate this book
Playful Design
Game design is a sibling discipline to software and Web design, but they're siblings that grew up in different houses. They have much more in common than their perceived distinction typically suggests, and user experience practitioners can realize enormous benefit by exploiting the solutions that games have found to the real problems of design. This book will show you how.
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
13 people are currently reading
228 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 27, 2013
The book bounces around from discussing apps with game-like elements, to traditional games, to video games, to mobile games, to games with a purpose (educational, persuasive, & influential). It discusses the user experience elements of each and tries to highlights how each of those elements contributes to user enjoyment. It's a solid and thorough overview.
Like a lot of Rosenfeld books it does this through dozens of references to existing examples, but has a hard time going any deeper than that. There's a wonderful framework in the first third of this book that I found really insightful and for a while I saw a lot of parallels between enjoyable games and the trinity of Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose. It's a solid, solid section which I wish would have been expanded more from a UX perspective, but again like Rosenfeld books, it just skims.
For a while I was confused while reading because there's a chunk where it sounds very much like a book for UX designers who want to design games (with one section on how to prototype games), but that's not why I bought this book.
Like a lot of Rosenfeld books it does this through dozens of references to existing examples, but has a hard time going any deeper than that. There's a wonderful framework in the first third of this book that I found really insightful and for a while I saw a lot of parallels between enjoyable games and the trinity of Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose. It's a solid, solid section which I wish would have been expanded more from a UX perspective, but again like Rosenfeld books, it just skims.
For a while I was confused while reading because there's a chunk where it sounds very much like a book for UX designers who want to design games (with one section on how to prototype games), but that's not why I bought this book.
January 21, 2024
Really loved this book. It opened a new window into my thinking about how experiences should work. John Ferrara, the creator of Fitter Critters, a game that encourages healthy eating habit in kids, vividly shows how good game design needs to have a message. There are many examples of games with a message, but the one that stuck with me is Monopoly, which we now think of as a game that seems to encourage mindless greed, but it was created in early 1900s as a critique and a "practical demonstration of the present system of land grabbing with all its usual outcomes and consequences."
There are many other tidbits in this book, and some unique perspective on persuasive design. Ferrara cites another author --whose name I forget-- and claims that any game where the only winning strategy is to do the "right thing" cannot be a persuasive. Persuasive games allow the players to discover the right thing for themselves. There are often compromises and the players have to discover the balance on their own. That's the essence of persuasion.
Now I am more inclined to think of gameplay as a means of communication, whether that's between the designer and the player, or between the players themselves. According to Ferrara, designers have a responsibility to find the meaning in what they build, even if that meaning is about the game itself.
There are many other tidbits in this book, and some unique perspective on persuasive design. Ferrara cites another author --whose name I forget-- and claims that any game where the only winning strategy is to do the "right thing" cannot be a persuasive. Persuasive games allow the players to discover the right thing for themselves. There are often compromises and the players have to discover the balance on their own. That's the essence of persuasion.
Now I am more inclined to think of gameplay as a means of communication, whether that's between the designer and the player, or between the players themselves. According to Ferrara, designers have a responsibility to find the meaning in what they build, even if that meaning is about the game itself.
July 14, 2023
No tengo mucho que decir, gran parte del libro es un análisis de juegos, literal juegos de consola muchas veces, sin aterrizarlo mucho a lo que yo pensé que sería (más rumbo a todo tipo de interfaces). Un par de capítulos fueron útiles nada más. No lo recomiendo, está muy viejo ya.
February 23, 2017
If you have zero experience gaming and want to read a textbook list of Things That Games Do, read Playful Design. If you're a UX designer who wants to apply game design principles to your work, find another book. This one won't help.
July 9, 2012
Playful Design is the first book that I can recall reading that contained a FAQ. I initially thought this might be a good thing as I like the idea that the goals of the book be spelled out right from the start.
However, after reading the book I suspect there is a different reason for the FAQ. That is, this book has a bit of an identity crisis. The first sentence in the "Who should read..." section states:
This sounds promising to me since the premise is that the novel approaches come from the application of design techniques found in the gaming industry. This is a worthy goal I say, however the book reads much as a primer for game design definitions. In very few spots did I see parallels drawn between game design practices and "conventional software" design practices. Likewise, I rarely (if ever) saw guidelines for applying the game techniques for practical purposes.
As a book for expanding one's techniques this book falls far short. As a way to expose oneself to the lexicon of the game industry and some (sadly thin) discussion regarding gamification this book is, well, just OK. I was hoping for a book that could guide me in applying game design techniques, but instead got a book that was filled with jargon. On the bright side, the jargon was mostly defined (eventually). I suppose if you're interested in breaking into the game industry or using its design techniques for your greater good, then you're on your own.
this review is also posted to my modus-ponens tumblog
However, after reading the book I suspect there is a different reason for the FAQ. That is, this book has a bit of an identity crisis. The first sentence in the "Who should read..." section states:
...written for designers of conventional software, websites, mobile apps, and other computer-mediated user experiences who are looking for novel approaches ...
This sounds promising to me since the premise is that the novel approaches come from the application of design techniques found in the gaming industry. This is a worthy goal I say, however the book reads much as a primer for game design definitions. In very few spots did I see parallels drawn between game design practices and "conventional software" design practices. Likewise, I rarely (if ever) saw guidelines for applying the game techniques for practical purposes.
As a book for expanding one's techniques this book falls far short. As a way to expose oneself to the lexicon of the game industry and some (sadly thin) discussion regarding gamification this book is, well, just OK. I was hoping for a book that could guide me in applying game design techniques, but instead got a book that was filled with jargon. On the bright side, the jargon was mostly defined (eventually). I suppose if you're interested in breaking into the game industry or using its design techniques for your greater good, then you're on your own.
this review is also posted to my modus-ponens tumblog
November 18, 2015
This book's subtitle is "Creating game experiences in everyday interfaces" while in fact it only describes basic principles of video game design described before John Ferrara by many other authors. Too many examples and too few references to any kind of research make me doubt the competence of the writer. Some statements are as well quite shallow and arguable to a high degree.
February 14, 2013
Good book, not for me. Too many headlines, sub topics and titles. Beides I'm the kind of person that hardly reads manuals. But I love the effort and games ofcourse!
May 16, 2013
A great read on how to better integrate game design into user experiences, with a focus on explaining what games are, how they work, and how they help people learn, as well as change opinions.
January 2, 2014
Good intro to some of the fundamentals of game design. Not super in depth and some parts are a bit obvious to industry observers but a good intro nonetheless.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews