Rating: 
Summary: Fairly good - fairly dated though
Review: "This book is out of date" is all I could think of when I read it. Rightly or wrongly, it tries to draw fundamental conclusions about game design by focusing on what has gone before and the present day. Unfortunately, I'd set the book's present day as 1995 with a few updates thrown in. So, you get a fair bunch of interviews from game designers, who produced classic games but not much from real, contemporary (i.e., 2001) games designers - which is what I was more interested in.It's a good background book with some good opinions on what should be in a game and what shouldn't but the CD-ROM is a total waste of plastic though so don't expect much from it.
Rating: 
Summary: An Introduction and More to the World of Game Design
Review: A wonderful book, which has basically become my bible on what Game Designing really is. I am sure that anyone who buys this book will be pleased. First it starts out with a Introduction on what Game Designing is and then it continues with a wonderful chapter on what gamers want in their games. Well, after that there are these great interviews with the top game designers of today which just blew my mind away. And the list goes on...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent game design book plus more...
Review: As a beginning game programmer, this book perfectly fills in the
gap of (hopefully) making me into a better one. The author was wise enough to include interviews with respected
game designers to prevent the book from being too opinionated. The best thing about this book is the author's honesty about
why some of his games were flawed in the hopes that we learn
from them. The sample game design document is one of the best
I've seen. I've seen samples from the web that were either too
short (leaving it to the team to assume anything) or too long
(too detailed). Lastly, he doesn't comment on the 'business' of the game
industry (he pokes at them though). I think this was a wise
move. Who wants to read about project management, financial
forecasts, focus groups, marketing in a book about game
design? I don't think I'll be buying any more game design books until I
find one that can best this.
Rating: 
Summary: good resource for game designers
Review: Each of the chapters of this book fall into one of three categories: an interview with a prominent game designer, an analysis of a successful game, or a discussion of game design principles. Each is valuable for different reasons, so I'd like to review each of them separately. The interviews are interesting, and go into much greater depth than most interviews you see. As a result, you're able to get a good idea of how each designer approaches the game design process, which can be useful in analyzing your own methods. The chapters analyzing games focused on a single game, but also looked at similar games in the genre. If you're an aspiring game designers, you'll benefit from these chapters. Partially because you will see what these games did well, but moreso because they will encourage you to analyze the design aspects of the games you're playing to see what they do right, what they do wrong, and how you can apply that to your own designs. About half of the chapters of the book cover various aspects of game design, presenting the author's own theories about what's important, what isn't, and the things you should be thinking about. It's hard to review the value of this; some of it you'll agree with, and some of it you may not. Depending on your degree of experience, some of it may be obvious, some of it may be new, and some of it may help you focus on areas you've been neglecting. Overall, I wouldn't consider this book a must-have, but if you're interested in becoming a well-rounded and successful game designer, there's a lot in here that will be of value to you.
Rating:
Summary: A Decent Read With Some Interesting Content
Review: For the aspiring game designer I would rate this book as average. Of the 23 chapters, the ones I found the most interesting were the interviews with leading game designers (though I wish they were probed further in certain areas). The chapters on the analysis of games were mixed, some analysis were insightful others were just plain obvious. At least the author analized games from different genres, providing insight into different types of games (other authors tended to stick to what they knew best). The same design document is helpful, especially if you've never seen one before. But there are several examples of design documents available on the internet now. The included CD-ROM is just about useless, but some my find the software helpful. This is not the worst book out there on Game Design, though it's certainly not the very best. I would recommend perusing it in your local bookstore before committing to purchase it.
Rating: 
Summary: A completely vacuous book
Review: I am a programmer, though not of games. I have a strategy turn-based board game that I made up on the floor of my bedroom for fun in the late 1980's, after play testing it it went into storage. Having seen various computer games in print, often based on existing board games, I thought maybe I would dust off the idea again and see if I could translate it to a working computer strategy game. Obviously, I would not start from scartch, I would see what others already accomplished in this area had done, and how. This book was my starting point, I thought you would see how to translate an idea into a technical design from which you could then pretty much cut the code, probably in Microsoft C++. After having derived a design I could then focus on learning in detail the relevant programming tools and get on and do a working software product. Alas, this book doesn't even get started. You want a section on established AI algorithms useful in gameing,so you can select an appropriate algorithm rather than make one up from scratch, you won't get that here. You want info on how practically to design program structures to represent human and computer players, you won't get it here. You want to build a sample game bit by bit from one chapter to the next to illustrate established techniques, you won't get it here. In essence, this book is more like treating game design as pure creative art, and skimming existing games to illustrate, but you already know this stuff. It is a bit like taking a bunch of exterior photos of existing buildings, and doing a book about architectural design just by compiling together those photos and pointing to the superficial similarities and differences, and there you go, you are now knowledgeable on architecture. Such an approach would of course not be suitable to turning out an architect or even really providing a starting foundation for an architect's education. The sections on interviews with known game designers is likewise totally useless to an aspiring computer game designer. I hoped Sid Meiers would tell us salient computer science design principles that make the computer opponents in his games operate. I think his Gettysburg completely outshines all other games of the genre and wanted to see what design principles such as AI were used by him. But forget it, you just get folksy chit chat about nothing much. I could have written this book, so could you. I wish we could put a star rating of zero.
Rating:
Summary: At Last a Good Book for Game Designers
Review: I don't know of any other book which covers the topic of computer game design as well or in as much detail as this one. It goes over all the steps a game designer must go through in order to see his game to completion, from intial idea to plyatesting. The chapter that analyzes what players are looking for in the games they play is truly great. It also includes some of the best interviews I have ever seen with brilliant designers like Sid Meier and Will Wright. While so many other game development books deal with programming, this is finally a book someone more interested in the design side of development will find fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: The Best That's Out There
Review: I work on video games professionally as a programmer, but I read a lot of books on design because that is the most challenging aspect of what we do. Technology is a solved problem; project management is getting there; that leaves the black hole of design. Of the books I've read, Richard Rouse's is the best. Where most books on game design treat you as if you have somehow landed in the position of creative director for a thirty man team -- and now you need help -- Rouse's book covers everything from level design in the trenches to the concept work of the lead designer. They say those who can't do, write, but Richard is an exception, with a few above average games in his ludography (and a flop or two, just like me). And when his knowledge isn't enough, he supplants it with interviews with the greats. Although it's true that some of the greats are no longer in the game, their advice is still valuable. (One thing that all of them agree on is the value of other people playtesting, whether it's Ed Logg field testing coin-op machines or Steve Meretzky looking at transcripts of people playing text adventures.) This book is also a survey of current trends in game design, from simulation to emergent strategy to meaningful choices. It provoked me to think deeper than I had before. So why only four stars? Yes, it is somewhat dated. Interviews with John Carmack, Warren Spector, and Jason Uyeda would be more relevant than the coin-op/PC game gurus presented here. Furthermore, I could have used less survey and more depth. Take emergent strategies, for example: he touches on this concept, says that It Is Good, but without really giving it the treatment it deserves: how does one create a game in which emergent strategies develop? What are the costs of such an approach to game design? Still, if you only read one book on game design, this should be it.
Rating:
Summary: The Best That's Out There
Review: I work on video games professionally as a programmer, but I read a lot of books on design because that is the most challenging aspect of what we do. Technology is a solved problem; project management is getting there; that leaves the black hole of design. Of the books I've read, Richard Rouse's is the best. Where most books on game design treat you as if you have somehow landed in the position of creative director for a thirty man team -- and now you need help -- Rouse's book covers everything from level design in the trenches to the concept work of the lead designer. They say those who can't do, write, but Richard is an exception, with a few above average games in his ludography (and a flop or two, just like me). And when his knowledge isn't enough, he supplants it with interviews with the greats. Although it's true that some of the greats are no longer in the game, their advice is still valuable. (One thing that all of them agree on is the value of other people playtesting, whether it's Ed Logg field testing coin-op machines or Steve Meretzky looking at transcripts of people playing text adventures.) This book is also a survey of current trends in game design, from simulation to emergent strategy to meaningful choices. It provoked me to think deeper than I had before. So why only four stars? Yes, it is somewhat dated. Interviews with John Carmack, Warren Spector, and Jason Uyeda would be more relevant than the coin-op/PC game gurus presented here. Furthermore, I could have used less survey and more depth. Take emergent strategies, for example: he touches on this concept, says that It Is Good, but without really giving it the treatment it deserves: how does one create a game in which emergent strategies develop? What are the costs of such an approach to game design? Still, if you only read one book on game design, this should be it.
Rating:
Summary: A great book on game theory for developers and laypeople
Review: The people below that are bashing on this book for not being technical or specific enough obviously didn't examine it very closely before they purchased it. The introduction clearly states that the book is about game theory--it's not intended to be a programming primer (as Mr. Rouse points out, there are already plenty of those available). And honestly, more developers should more consideration to the topics presented in this book before they dive into their projects, because while programming a game may not be an art, creating one certainly is. Most of the topics covered arer fairly timeless (the technology may have marched on, but the a lot of the design issues are pretty much the same today as they were five or ten years ago). The interviews are a good read even if you have absolutely no interest in getting into game design. Overall, I'd recommend it.
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