This in-depth resource teaches you to craft mechanics that generate challenging, enjoyable, and well-balanced gameplay. You’ll discover at what stages to prototype, test, and implement mechanics in games and learn how to visualize and simulate game mechanics in order to design better games. Along the way, you’ll practice what you’ve learned with hands-on lessons. A free downloadable simulation tool developed by Joris Dormans is also available in order to follow along with exercises in the book in an easy-to-use graphical environment.

In Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design, you’ll learn how to:

• Design and balance game mechanics to create emergent gameplay before you write a single line of code.
• Visualize the internal economy so that you can immediately see what goes on in a complex game.
• Use novel prototyping techniques that let you simulate games and collect vast quantities of gameplay data on the first day of development.
• Apply design patterns for game mechanics—from a library in this book—to improve your game designs.
• Explore the delicate balance between game mechanics and level design to create compelling, long-lasting game experiences.
• Replace fixed, scripted events in your game with dynamic progression systems to give your players a new experience every time they play.

"I've been waiting for a book like this for ten years: packed with game design goodness that tackles the science without undermining the art."

--Richard Bartle, University of Essex, co-author of the first MMORPG

 “Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Joris Dormans & Ernest Adams formalizes game grammar quite well. Not sure I need to write a next book now!”

 -- Raph Koster, author of A Theory of Fun for Game Design.

About the Author

Ernest Adams is a game design consultant, teacher, and the author of the classic Fundamentals of Game Design, Second Edition, the companion volume to this title. He has worked in the game industry for 23 years, eight of them at Electronic Arts. He is also the founder and first chairman of the International Game Developers’ Association.

Joris Dormans (PhD) is a game design lecturer and researcher based in Amsterdam with eight years of experience in higher education. For the past four years he has been researching formal tools and methods to design game mechanics. As an independent, freelance game designer he published and worked on several video games and board games, including story-driven adventure games, physical platform games, and a satirical political card game.