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Title: The Game Inventor's Guidebook by Brian Tinsman ISBN: 0-87349-552-7 Publisher: Krause Publications Pub. Date: February, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An Entertaining and Educational Look Non-Computer Games
Comment: According to its subtitle, The Game Inventor's Guidebook covers: "How to Invent and Sell Board Games, Card Games, Role-player Games, and Everything in Between!" In other words, the book covers the modern, *non*-computer game industry.
The book opens with short descriptions of some of the success stories of the past couple decades:
* Trivial Pursuit
* Magic: the Gathering
* Dungeons & Dragons
* The Pokemon Trading Card Game
If you're not familiar with the stories behind these games, they make very interesting reading, especially for indies. With the exception of the Pokemon TCG, these are stories of dedicated individuals pursuing a dream and not giving up when things get tough.
After that, the book describes how the game publishing industry works, and provides summaries of the companies and games that a would-be "game inventor" should be aware of.
More useful than the birds-eye view of how the industry works are the frequent interviews with publishers and game designers. These are probably the best part of the book. Such modern "name" game designers like Reiner Knizia (Lord of the Rings, Tigris & Euphrates & many, many more), Brian Hersch (Outburst, Taboo), Mike Fitzgerald (Mystery Rummy, Wyvern), and more, discuss how they got started and how they approach game design. Equally informative were the interviews with publishers such as Mike Gray of Hasbro, Peggy Brown of Patch, Mike Osterhaus of Out of the Box, and others.
Because of the costs associated with games of this nature, the book several times cautions against self-publishing your game ideas, recommending that the would-be game inventor go through a publisher. Despite this advice, the book also points out that such major successes as Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and even the perennial Monopoly were created and made successful by determined self-publishers before a major publishing company picked them up.
The book does provide 4 chapters discussing what's involved with self-publishing games. Like most of the book, though, the chapters are at a very high level, providing more of a broadbrush overview than details. Still, the chapters cover the topic quite well.
One point that the book stresses over and over is that all game design should begin by first deciding on your audience. If you don't care about the marketability of your game, then you can start where you wish and enjoy creating and playing your game. But if you want to appeal to a segment of the population bigger than "You and People Just Like You", you have to pick who you want to appeal to. Once you know who you're making the game for, you can adjust and refine to better appeal to those people.
All in all, The Game Inventor's Guidebook provides an entertaining and educational look at the non-computer game industry and its current markets. If you are serious about game design, and want to learn about all aspects of game design, and not just within the computer industry, this book provides a good place to start.
Rating: 5
Summary: Informative Look at Toy & Game Inventing
Comment: As a professional toy inventor and manufacturer, I found this book to be right on target. It gives both current and prospective inventors critical the type of ammunition needed to succeed in this highly competitive, extremely speculative business. I wish that I'd read this book when I started out fourteen years ago. Even now I found it helpful to be reminded of some of the basic precepts and underlying structure of the biz.
Rating: 1
Summary: Very High Level, Very Little Detail
Comment: I make video games for a living, and was hoping to glean one or two new nuggets of game design strategy I could add to my repetoire. I failed. What wasn't apparent from reading about the book on Amazon is that it is quite small and thin - almost pamphlet-sized - and doesn't divulge any important underlying principles for good game design. Instead, it's a broad, high-level overview along the lines of 'There are companies that make trading card games, such as Wizards of the Coast.' I might purchase the book as a stocking stuffer for someone who liked games, but that's about it. I would not have purchased if I'd had my hands on it in a store.
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Title: The Toy and Game Inventor's Handbook by Richard C. Levy, Ronald O. Weingartner ISBN: 1592570623 Publisher: Alpha Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Game Makers: The Story of Parker Brothers, from Tiddledy Winks to Trivial Pursuit by Philip E. Orbanes ISBN: 1591392691 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 14 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: How to License Your Million Dollar Idea: Everything You Need To Know To Turn a Simple Idea into a Million Dollar Payday, 2nd Edition by Harvey Reese ISBN: 0471204013 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 28 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations by R. C. Bell ISBN: 0486238555 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 February, 1980 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Board Games of the 50'S, 60'S, & 70's ISBN: 0895380684 Publisher: L-W Promotions Pub. Date: July, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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