So I chose this book based for aiding me in my design of Project 1 – so off of the bat my intentions for this book were mostly trying to gather practical usefulness from reading.
Enjoyment (6/10):
This book was written in a very readable fashion, much like it felt like I was having a conversation with the author. Additionally almost every other page (the right side looking at an open book) contained a hand-drawn graphic or cartoon to help cement the ideas he was trying to express. However, likely due to it feeling like a conversation, I felt the organization or pacing of the book was a bit odd with repeat references to established topics like the comparison of games and art.
Learning (3/10):
I unfortunately am going to rate this book low on amount of information I learned – which is definitely a biased opinion because of my high hopes for learning. To me, the book seemed to be more based on what games should be (e.g. a tool for learning) than how to make a good game. It focuses a lot in comparing video games to an art medium and how games should make us feel and appreciate targeted feelings. However true this altruistic statement may be, I feel like it really failed to teach me how to create games to teach emotion…. much like in Chess I already know you must check-mate their king, I get that, but what is the best way to check-mate their king?
However, over a chapter or two in the book I did learn to focus on some small things – namely, people love to optimize their strategies which leads to boredom and that a simple base mechanic can be reskinned with graphics to tell completely different stories (e.g. imagine if Tetris blocks where prisoners thrown in a well that once there is a solid row they suffocated and disappeared).
Broadening (1/10):
I really do not feel like this book has changed my outlook on how I view games or my approach to making my own game. I felt like certain topics like, games should teach us something or people love to master simple tasks should have a lasting effect on my design, but with no real practical implementations talked about it is hard to see how I can use this information in the future.
Closing Remarks:
This book clearly has high remarks from prominent sources, so I hope that my poor review does not mean that I was to daft to understand it. However, I will stand by and say that if you are interested in games as merely a hobby or interest – this may be interesting, but if you are building a game and need to know what mechanics are best, this book is not that.