ep03 - Jesse Schell - The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

In this episode we cover this weighty game design textbook, discussing its stronger and weaker areas, how it can help new developers to understand design and player psychology, and why so many more technically-oriented folks bounce off the book. Host Joe Baxter-Webb is a game design educator and YouTuber. He has previously been the course lead in Game Design at Canterbury Christ Church University, and has helped develop for multiple commercial games companies including King (Candy Crush Soda Saga) Karta (Blackpink in Roblox, Spotify in Fortnite) and Adult Swim Games. Guest host Jeremy Johnson is an indie dev and also Assistant Professor of Video Game Development at St. Edward's University, Texas, USA, where he teaches from A Book of Lenses every semester. 

Most books mentioned are available via my bookshop.org affiliate page. This allows you to purchase books online in a way which benefits small local retailers. https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/indiegameclinic

other things cited:

• Deck of Lenses, the free online version: https://deck.artofgamedesign.com/#/menu/0/?lang=en
• Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies, online version: https://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html
• Achievement Relocked: Loss Aversion and Game Design by Geoff Engelstein: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Achievement-Relocked-Aversion-Playful-Thinking/dp/026204353X
• Fermat and Pascal on Probability (on the games-based origins of probability math): chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/pascal.pdf
• George Fan: How I Got My Mom to Play Through Plants vs. Zombies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbzhHSexzpY
• Purple Cow by Seth Godin, Animated Book Summary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QkPaJ299Uk
• The Writer Will Do Something by Matthew Seiji: https://matthewseiji.itch.io/twwds
• the "Japanese inventor with 3500 patents" was Dr. Nakamatsu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnjSjJOEfSc

The reading list of GDL is here on Bookshop.org https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/the-game-developers-library-podcast-reading-list?

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