The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology by Katie Salen

The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology Reviews

• 
  Odile

  This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in thinking about play and games. There is a very broad selection of essays and articles that touch upon historical and cultural issues of play, as well as specific games ranging from folk games to board games, card games, and of course video games.
  
  The name might be slightly misleading; you won't find much in the way of tutorials or guidance here if you just want to be a game designer. Instead, this is aimed towards when you are interested in game design, but at the same time want to reflect on what games are and mean in the first place. More theoretical and practical, in other words, but to be honest, I think if you're really serious about game design from a creative direction standpoint, you will want to become familiar with many of the writers and pieces in this heavy tome.
  
  As I haven't read Salen and Zimmerman's earlier collection 'Rules of Play', I can't really compare this to it, but I'm definitely interested in seeking it out now.
• 
  Hans Otterson

  I am not as interested in game design as I once was (nor in games, especially video games--every half decade I buy a hot new console, buy a few games, play twenty hours or so across them, and then sell everything) but as a discussion of the guts of an artform, I knew this could offer me fruit. I'd read Salen and Zimmerman's text de résistance,
  Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, and earned a great deal of respect for their knowledge. Having turned my art-ardor decidedly toward fiction, nevertheless I figured I could play a kind of game with this tome: absorb the lessons of game design, but pretend that they are instead lessons about writing.
  
  Maintaining orthopraxy in this ideal proved impossible, but it was a fun game. And the lessons I learned? Will they bear figs or will Christ curse my tree?
  
  (A part of the Shelf Love project:
  https://tinyurl.com/y5w8h4pa)
  
  2W
• 
  Allie Francies

  Thank you thesis work, I get to read ridiculously heavy tomes dedicated to the mythological underpinnings of the Legend of Zelda. Being a huge video game fan, it's neat to see these games that I love so doted on, on the other hand it's a little silly to read an essay on the subtext of "Adventure"