Rules of Play or Being Digital

Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals

Author: Katie Salen

As pop culture, games are as important as film or television--but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games..

Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance.

Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

Table of Contents:

	Foreword
	Preface
	About This Book	1
	The Design Process	11
	Commissioned Essay	22
Unit 1	Core Concepts	28
3	Meaningful Play	30
4	Design	38
5	Systems	48
6	Interactivity	56
7	Defining Games	70
8	Defining Digital Games	84
9	The Magic Circle	92
10	The Primary Schemas: RULES, PLAY, CULTURE	100
	Commissioned Game	106
Unit 2	RULES	116
11	Defining Rules	118
12	Rules on Three Levels	126
13	The Rules of Digital Games	140
14	Games as Emergent Systems	150
15	Games as Systems of Uncertainty	172
16	Games as Information Theory Systems	190
17	Games as Systems of Information	202
18	Games as Cybernetic Systems	212
19	Games as Game Theory Systems	230
20	Games as Systems of Conflict	248
21	Breaking the Rules	266
	Commissioned Game	286
Unit 3	PLAY	298
22	Defining Play	300
23	Games as the Play of Experience	312
24	Games as the Play of Pleasure	328
25	Games as the Play of Meaning	362
26	Games as Narrative Play	376
27	Games as the Play of Simulation	420
28	Games as Social Play	460
	Commissioned Game	490
Unit 4	CULTURE	502
29	Defining Culture	504
30	Games as Cultural Rhetoric	514
31	Games as Open Culture	536
32	Games as Cultural Resistance	556
33	Games as Cultural Environment	570
	Commissioned Game	588
	Additional Reading and Resources	602
	Conclusion	604
	Bibliography	608
	List of Games Cited	620
	Index	638

Go to: Textured Tresses or The Complete Book of Isometrics

Being Digital

Author: Nicholas Negropont

In lively, mordantly witty prose, Negroponte decodes the mysteries--and debunks the hype--surrounding bandwidth, multimedia, virtual reality, and the Internet, and explains why such touted innovations as the fax and the CD-ROM are likely to go the way of the BetaMax. "Succinct and readable. . . . If you suffer from digital anxiety . . . here is a book that lays it all out for you."--Newsday.

Publishers Weekly

Negroponte, a Wired columnist and founder of MIT's Media Lab, presents an accessible guide to the cutting edge of digital technology and his predictions for its future. (Jan.)

Library Journal

Negroponte, popular columnist for Wired magazine and founding director for the MIT Media Lab, describes how advancements in computer technology and telecommunications will transform workplaces, households, and educational institutions. He explains how this revolution will change the way we live, think, and interact with one another and with technology and foresees some mind-boggling challenges that lie ahead in developing truly global systems for delivering multimedia and other forms of digitally based information. Negroponte characterizes the development of future information delivery systems as a battle between atoms, the components of books and other physical resources, and bits, the basic building blocks of information. In 1991, he predicted the eventual demise of libraries, those vast storehouses of atoms, in favor of bit-based purveyors of information. An important work for public and academic libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/94.]-Joe Accardi, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago