The new book: A Grammar of Gameplay

Now that it’s on Amazon, I suppose that I need to actually write it.

This is the follow-on to A Theory of Fun for Game Design, of course, and it’s called A Grammar of Gameplay: How Games Work. It’s intended as a companion, of course, but also as an amalgam of all the thoughts on game atoms, game design notation, mechannics vs dressing, and so on. It’s also intended to spend a fair amount of time on only the dressing — not so much as to replace indispensable books like Lee Sheldon’s, but just to provide a bit of an overview of how non-mechanical elements influence a player’s perception of a game.

The overview sell sheet that I provided to the publisher:

A Grammar of Gameplay: How Games Work

In A Theory of Fun for Game Design, a case was made for the enormous cognitive value that games have, and how they fit into the broader picture of human culture, acting as teachers of important concepts throughout life. Using the vocabulary provided by science and the arts, we explored the strengths and weaknesses of games as a medium, and explored the vast possibilities games offer.

Now in A Grammar of Gameplay: How Games Work we turn to the question of how they accomplish these things. Using the latest thinking from game studies as well as years of experience, games are broken down and revealed as models of reality. We learn how they tick, how they teach, and what sorts of things they can communicate.

The book is broken into a few broad sections:

• A brief recap of A Theory of Fun, to provide context for the rest of the book.
• An overall structure for looking at games: separating game mechanics from content, the game metaphor from the mechanics, and the narrative from the metaphor.
• A breakdown of the “grammar” of games: how the mechanics fit together naturally to form a sort of “atomic theory of game design.”
• The borrowed media: games today are a multimedia experience. The mechanics alone are not the only part of the experience. Using research and knowledge from a variety of fields, we explore the best practices and the cognitive impacts of things like camera choice, art style, and music.

This is all presented in the same style as A Theory of Fun – cartoons on every facing page, and a light and easy tone that conveys complex concepts with maximum scholarship and minimal confusion. Anyone from game designers to game players will want to read this book for a greater understanding of how games work, while those interested in the scholarly material will once again find extensive end notes designed to help people do deeper research.

Since a large part of the book will be defining and exploring terms from the fledgling field of ludology, there will also be a special appendix to the book providing definitions of game design terms in light of the game grammar defined in the book.

Rough outline

• Recap of ATOF: why games matter
  • Where games exist: the spaces they are placed within
  • Social contexts and solo contexts
  • Breaking up games: mechanics, content, metaphor, and narrative
• Games as models
  • The topology of game spaces
  • All games are turn-based: iteration and preparation
  • Verbs: the core of games
  • Choices in solutions
  • Skill required
  • Variable feedback
  • Dealing with the Mastery Problem and other feedback loops
  • Cost of failure
  • What is content?
• Metaphor: shaping the message
  • Game design patterns
  • Types of game
  • Common metaphors
  • The meaning of metaphors
  • Human universals versus cultural associations: what trappings always work?
  • Art styles, color, psychological impact
  • Sound and music
  • The interactive movie: narrative in games
  • Cameras and viewpoints
• The shape of things to come
  • The embedding trend
  • Games that are not games
  • The power of models
  • Singularity

What exists right now? A bunch of notes, which is about where I was at this stage on ATOF too. Except that on ATOF I had the skeleton, via the original presentation, and I don’t have that in this case. I may actually have to putline the book in Powerpoint to capture the same feel as the first book!

Supposedly, I’ll have it done by the fall. Wish me luck — I’ll keep you posted, and probably also pester you for research help!