Level Up! - The Guide To Great Video Game Design 2E

Update to include:

Expansion on themes

Touch and touch screen controls

AR enabled games & incorporating real-world camera in to your game

Motion controls

Designing an app icon

Real world level design

Voice over for games and much more…

Level Up! covers the entire video game creation process. Readers will learn how to develop marketable ideas, learn what perils and pitfalls await them during a game’s pre-production, production and post-production stages. Rogers’ also provides creative ideas to serve as fuel for the reader’s own projects from game theme and environments to gameplay mechanics.

Inside, video game industry veteran Scott Rogers provides clear and well-thought out examples that forgo theoretical gobbledygook with charmingly illustrated concepts and solutions based on Rogers’ years of professional experience. Level Up! is the “Understanding Comics” of video game design – an indispensable guide for video game designers both “in the field” and the classroom.

Topics covered include:

• Understanding what gamers want
• Compelling character design
• Working with player actions
• Techniques for non-human characters
• Camera techniques – the camera as a character
• Designing UI and HUD
• Beautiful level design
• What games designers can learn from theme parks
• Combat, puzzles and game mechanics
• Fun and UNFUN
• How to make the world’s greatest Boss battle (and why not to do it)

and tons more – including the business of design, creating design documents, the pitch and more.

Scott Rogers (Thousand Oaks, CA) is a Principal Imagineer at Walt Disney. After deciding that game designers have more fun, Scott embarked on a career creating game designs for a number of successful titles including Sony's GOD OF WAR, Capcom's MAXIMO: GHOSTS TO GLORY and its sequel MAXIMO VS. ARMY OF ZIN, Namco's PAC-MAN WORLD and THQ's DRAWN TO LIFE series. He lives in Thousand Oaks with his family and a large collection of video games.