Game Design Essentials

Briar Lee Mitchell is a partner in the gaming company Star Mountain Studios, as well as a creator of the successful adventure game Apparitions, made with SyFy's ghost hunters, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson. She was previously a lead artist at Universal Studios Games Division, overseeing the art for K-6 edutainment computer games. Her career began in the 1980s with Lucasfilm and the Smithsonian on their first interactive laserdisc, The Life and Times of Albert Einstein. Mitchell has a master's degree in medical and biological illustration from the University of California, San Francisco, and she has worked for Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Yale medical institutions producing medical/forensic illustrations and animations. She has also taught courses in visual effects, animation, and game art design at the college level.

Introduction xix Chapter 1 Game Design Origins 1 Chapter 2 Gameplay Styles 25 Chapter 3 Core Game Design Concepts 43 Chapter 4 Visual Design 81 Chapter 5 Detailed Development of Visuals 111 Chapter 6 Navigation and Interfaces 139 Chapter 7 Designing Levels and the Game Design Document 165 Chapter 8 Sound 185 Chapter 9 Job Descriptions, Game Tracking, and Legal Issues 203 Chapter 10 Distribution and Marketing 225 Appendix A Answers to Review Questions 249 Appendix B Education, Training, and Working in Games 255 Appendix C Game Design Document 275 Index 289