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Comment by Terry_B | Hacker News Reader

I've had a really hard time finding writing of this quality and insight into good game design.

There's lots of fluffy, high level stuff at one end of the spectrum and then lots of stuff that discusses the details of specific well trodden genres ad nauseum.

There's not so much that's of direct use when you sit down and try and design an orginal type of game by applying principals like this it seems to me.

I don't know how much of that is because the people with such insight haven't written it down, or they really just do it by feel and trial and error rather than by applying easy to describe techniques.

Does anyone have any other recommendations like this?

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Sirlin has written what seems to be the most commonly referenced piece whenever games and "thinking" come up. Playing to Win, available free at his website (www.sirlin.net/ptw/), doesn't directly deal with game design, but it comes up throughout. His blog generally trends on game design topics. (He's been a fighting game pro, rebalanced SF2 for the most recent version, and is in the process of releasing some physical games now.)

Costikyan writes a lot of good stuff. http://playthisthing.com/randomness-blight-or-bane is a great example, and you can find some other writings of his in various archives. PTT itself has him (and a few other contributors of varying flavors) writing on new (indie, board, etc.) games.

Soren Johnson (Lead designer on Civ4) had a series going at http://www.designer-notes.com/, but hasn't appeared to have posted recently. http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=132 is a good example, discussing how easily players can perceive an AI to be "cheating".

Brenda Braithwaite (Wizardry series, Train) has a similar, seemingly modestly defunct blog that is worth reading regardless.

Edmund McMillen of Super Meatboy posted about difficulty: http://supermeatboy.com/13/Why_am_I_so____hard_/. There's a similar post somewhere on the blog.

Gama Sutra occasionally has useful things, but you need to filter a lot.

Without endorsing it overly, Less Talk More Rock (http://boingboing.net/features/morerock.html) is worth consideration. (For balance, http://sinisterdesign.net/?p=457).

Thanks! I'd read Costikyan and plenty of Gama Sutra before but not the others.

When sitting down to prototype a game I usually find the first iteration turns out to not have the fun gameplay you had imagined at all. It's then a matter of how to think about the problem and what things you should try in attmpet to make it fun and challenging. Perhaps you could identify that the idea just stinks to being with..

Having not worked along side an experienced game designer I'm always curious as to whether they know of ideas and tools to apply that aren't commonly known or whether it is just instinct.

I feel like there must be a large catalogue of game design rules of thumb in the heads of successful designers that have not been written down and I'd love to know them :)

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