The Game Development Strategy Guide

Some of today’s most popular video games have been on the market for decades, while others barely make it days before disappearing forever. What differentiates the games that survive? This expansive look at modern video game development gives you an end-to-end, cross-disciplinary understanding of the people, processes, and core design principles you’ll need to create video games that thrive. 

Who Should Read This Book

This book is for anyone and everyone interested in working on and creating games, including:

• Aspiring game developers of any discipline.
• Veteran game developers looking to reframe their understanding of game development to account for modern trends and standards.
• Creative leaders who need to build and support environments where great video games are created.
• Game designers trying to improve their understanding of the business considerations that have felled so many recent games.
• User experience designers looking to understand, define, and expand their impact in the broader video game market.
• Producers struggling with the choice of business model or monetization choices for their games.
• Partners to video game developers like legal counsel, business development, venture capitalists, marketing, licensing, and human relations.

You’ll learn…

• A standard for basic game design principles.
• Foundational science and the art of universal player motivation, critical to informing decisions about the game.
• The modern gaming business, including live-service games.
• The roles that people and companies play in the game development process.
• A common language for game development techniques.
• How to achieve creative ideation and learn prioritization techniques.
• More advanced design topics to help games thrive over time.
• How to design games that encourage positive social experiences.
• Modern video gaming monetization techniques.
• To recognize common ethical and legal issues.
• About key video games hardware, software, engines, and platforms.
• What works and what doesn’t in gaming—showing common patterns in the industry and design struggles.
• Insights that will apply to teams and games of any size—from indie games to mega games

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Does “game development” in the title mean this is a programming book?No. This book is intended for anyone who works on video games, and starts in Chapter 1, “What Makes Us Play,” by exploring universal player motivations. The word developer in video gaming, like the broader software industry, is used in many different ways. As discussed in Chapter 3, “Putting the Dev in Game Development,”while some folks believe “game development” refers only to programming, it is usually a more general term applied to the collective act of making a game across all disciplines (as demonstrated by the existence of the broader Game Developers Conference).
2. Is this book only useful for new game developers?This book is useful for game developers at any stage of their career. While it’s a fantastic overview for early career game developers, many veterans who reviewed this book mentioned that they pulled away new insights, especially from chapters like Chapter 9, “From Emergence to Prosocial Gaming.” and Chapter 11, “Efficient and Ethi-cal Economies.” Readers will walk away with a common language for game development techniques from chapters like Chapter 3 and Chapter 13, “The Good and Bad of Game Dev Processes,” that you can use with developers at any career stage.
3. Can I use this book to help my nonindustry partners understand game development?Absolutely! As I wrote this book, I wrote it with a secondary audience of partners like business development, legal, and other groups who don’t experience the industry in the same way. There are tons of folks who would benefit from an overview of the industry and our considerations all in one place. They’ll get the most out of chapters like Chapter 2, “The Living Business of Games,” and Chapter 10, “The Money Game,” which lay out the basic business models at play today, as well as Chapter 3, which will help folks understand why game development teams are so big and complex, and Chapter 7, “Engaging Players over Time,” and Chapter 8,“Creating Immersive Worlds,” which really help explain how games are different from other forms of entertainment.