The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

I am not a professional game designer, but I really like "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses". It teaches you to look at games (and all kinds of experiences) through different viewpoints like looking at the economy of the game or looking at the love and relationships in the game. Very interesting for thinking about the complex systems within modern games.

The art of game design: Even if you're not aspiring to be a game dev, this book teaches you a lot about project scope, management, psychology, mechanics, balance and user experience. Flight of the buffalo: An excellent book about leadership. Moneyball: I'm not into novels, so this might be the closest thing to it. It's a fantastic book about thinking creatively and working with what you have. It's about baseball, but even if you don't like it, it's quite entertaining and insightful.

The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford was the first book on the theory computer and video games. It's got quite a few ideas in there that are still relevant today. But I don't think it's comprehensive or constantly referenced by those in the industry (it's almost forgotten about by modern designers, I bet). I think a closer fit to a 'bible of the field' would be The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell. Lots of good information about what to think about, and you can even buy a deck of tarot-sized cards that has a compiled list of all the questions the book invites you to raise when thinking about your game on them. I'm still waiting for something similar that focuses more on board game design specifically, but a lot of the Book of Lenses can be applied to board games as well.

See also: What are some books about everything? http://qr.ae/8S14dl The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Second Edition https://amzn.com/dp/B00OYUO4PY I'm told the dead trees version is a must, but it's also massive, so pick your preferred inconvenience. This is like Eno's Oblique Strategies deck in encyclopedia form. Useful in any circumstances where you'd like to gain fresh perspective on a creation. From Amazon : The Art of Game Design presents 100+ sets of questions, or different lenses, for viewing a game’s design, encompassing diverse fields such as psychology, architecture, music, visual design, film, software engineering, theme park design, mathematics, puzzle design, and anthropology...

Too bad this comment is too down, but The Art Of Game Design is a fantastic book about design and user experience, even if you're not into games, there's some interesting psychology to learn and to apply in whatever you're doing.