Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach

by Michael Sellers

In Advanced Game Design , pioneering game designer and instructor Michael Sellers situates game design practices in a strong theoretical framework of systems thinking, enabling designers to think more deeply and clearly about their work, so they can produce better, more engaging games for any device or platform. Sellers offers a deep unifying framework in which practical game design best practices and proven systems thinking theory reinforce each other, helping game designers understand what they are trying to accomplish and the best ways to achieve it. Drawing on 20+ years of experience designing games, launching game studios, and teaching game design, Sellers

Genres: Game Design, Games, Nonfiction, Design, Video Games, Academic, Gaming

464 pages, Paperback

Published November 14, 2017

Reviews

[Michal Domanski · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a hard time giving this book such a bad rating, since the first chapter is just beyond excellent. It gives you an incredible view into systemic thinking, and if it was a short book or a long article on the internet on this matter, I would give it the best rating possible.
Once you pass the threshold of page 50, prepare yourself for 400 pages of constantly repeating, ungrounded opinions. The author describes this book being targeted towards advanced designers, yet it covers only the most basic matters in the most vague way. The only thing being advanced about this book is the way the author expresses himself, in an almost painstaking way one would normally expect from a dissertation.

The book loses itself in the usual topics of teamwork, design documentation and pitching, which have already been well covered by other literature to a deeper extent, diluting the purpose of it. The book also taps into behavioural and emotional theory and narrative design, barely offering references where the authors insights come from. Experts in these field are usually way more careful about drawing any kinds of conclusions, especially when it comes to brain chemistry and its correlation to our behaviour. This topic alone could fill a whole book, its appearance within this book is esoteric at best. The ultimate advise given based on those parts is consistent with other literature though. However, this advise ends up being very rudimentary, offering not much value to anyone other than a novel designer. I recommend "The Gamers Brain" for a more grounded view on those topics. All in all, the book tries to be a sort of "How to make a game" from A-Z, while any advanced designer I know off is rather interested in improving specific techniques.

The actual meat of the book, how to design in systems, is pretty much covered in the first chapter. This chapter is then repeated over and over again, with some extra bits of information spread across the rest of the book. The author tries to force a corset on the whole structure of the book, structuring everything as a loop. This works for the more systemic parts of game design, but falls apart when crucial topics like UX, audiovisual feedback and player experience are covered as a side effect of yet another iteration of the same information you have already read 10 times throughout the book. In some way the idea of a loop is almost obsessive to the author, as if it was the answer to everything.

Yet there are parts of the book, which really make me doubt the authors understanding of complex systems. You'll find diagrams where stocks loop back into sources, or you'll find negative reinforcing loops being relabelled as balancing loops. The centrifugal governor is another good example, where the author correctly describes it as an example of a balancing loop at first, yet at a later point describes it as a reinforcing and balancing loop at work (I don't know which way the author was twisting the model of this system to arrive at this conclusion. At best it's a positive and negative loop at work). Also, at first the author correctly identifies it as a potentially oscillating system, yet later he describes it as a linear system with strict correlations (which, as Ernest Adams describes in his book Game Mechanics, solely depends on how the parameters of such a system would be tuned).
Speaking of which, I wonder where the author takes the freedom of calling this system linear. The author gives the example of lynx and hares to define non-linearity through their set of partial differential equations, yet those very PDEs are as linear as the former systems. The only difference is that the second system offers two degrees of freedom and therefore requires more sophisticated methodology to solve for its explicit form. Both of these systems are non-linear, both of them have linear PDEs. Having experience in the fields of analytics I can state that those parts are not correct in the form they are presented, which makes me doubt the other parts of the book I only have rudimentary background knowledge off.

Unfortunately this book was a waste of time for me. Usually, I would've stoped after the first 50 pages, but the fact that exactly those pages are so well written, and the fact that Raph Koster himself recommended this book on Amazon left me in deep hope that eventually one of the later chapters would make up for it. As you can imagine, they didn't. I don't feel any smarter, I feel as if someone was spoon-feeding me topics I've already read countless times about in more accessible literature in a way that makes him sound smarter than said literature. I'm upset, because I feel as if someone didn't treat my time with respect. I spent an hour on this review, but I think it's worth it to warn other people with the same expectations towards this book from doing the same mistake.
I recommend Game Mechanics by Ernest Adams which this book partially bases on, and made me read this book as a hopeful follow up in the first place. That book is actually really meant for advanced designers and will teach you a lot about systemic design. The only thing this book adds is the importance of thinking hierarchically within systems.

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic resource on systemic thinking in general & the pitfalls of reductionist views/thinking. Enjoyed the applications in the context of game design.

[David Hunter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but the later chapters rely heavily on Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Dormans and Adams.

[Saad Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative book, especially for an aspiring designer like myself. I think part 1 of the book is a phenomenal overview of system dynamics, and the author explains principles that could be applied to any type of human-centered design. I found the chapters on gameplay loops and game balancing particularly interesting. However, contrary to the title of the book, I would not call anything in this book "advanced".

[Martin Annander · Rating 4 out of 5]

This IS a great book with some real meat and an interesting message of systemic approaches here to stay. But it’s also wordy and repetitive in that specific academic-sounding way sometimes typical of American university material. Get it and read it, but be prepared for the countless chapter references and repetitions of the same points across its 400 pages.

[Dong · Rating 1 out of 5]

i'll say its almost a completed trash, i wasted one and a half day to read but got almost nothing from it. i only read this book beacuse robert zubek recommoned it as futher read at this book elements of game desin. i'll not recommend anyone to read this, its content full of empty repeated bullshit.

[Emil Boman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good introduction to systems thinking in general and game design in particular.

[Prejudice Neutrino · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some things must just be done and cannot be put into text.

[Mario Russo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must have book for game designers, possibly in my top 3.