Christopher Barney’s Pattern Language for Game Design builds on the revolutionary work of architect Christopher Alexander to show students, teachers, and game development professionals how to derive best practices in all aspects of game design. Using a series of practical, rigorous exercises, designers can observe and analyze the failures and successes of the games they know and love to find the deep patterns that underlie good design. From an in-depth look at Alexander’s work to a critique of pattern theory in various fields, to a new approach that challenges your knowledge and puts it to work, this book seeks to transform how we view building interactive experiences that shape us.
Key Features:
- Background on the architectural concepts of patterns and a Pattern Language as defined in the work of Christopher Alexander, including his later work on the Fifteen Properties of Wholeness and Generative Codes.
- Analysis of other uses of Alexander’s work in computer science and game design, and the limitations of those efforts.
- A comprehensive set of example exercises to help the reader develop their own patterns that can be used in practical day-to-day game design tasks.
- Exercises that are useful to designers at all levels of experience and can be completed in any order, allowing students to select exercises that match their coursework and allowing professionals to choose exercises that address their real-world challenges.
- Discussion of common pitfalls and difficulties with the pattern derivation process.
- A guide for game design teachers, studio leaders, and university departments for curating and maintaining institutional Pattern Languages.
- Interactive Pattern Language website where you can share patterns with developers throughout the world (patternlanguageforgamedesign.com). This website also contains a comprehensive reference to all games referenced in this book.
This fully updated new edition includes:
- Revised Pattern Template enhanced to record additional aspects of patterns.
- A robust set of twenty new mechanics-focused pattern exercises.
- New example patterns for each new exercise.
- QR codes and links to the Pattern Library website showing the detailed work used to produce each example pattern.
- A framework for decomposing game mechanics for the application of design patterns. (Atomic Mechanics Theory)
- A system for diagramming related sets of patterns and the design problems they address.
- The application of Playable Concepts as rhetorical proofs for Design Patterns.
- New advice for applying patterns to level design.
Visit the Pattern Library Website at patternlanguageforgamedesign.com
Table of Contents:
Section I - Introduction, Chapter 1 - Introduction, Section II - Background, Chapter2 - Alexandrian Patterns, Chapter 3 - Other Fields, Chapter 4 - Game Design, Section III - An Introduction to Patterns in Game Design, Chapter 5 - Example Pattern, Chapter 6 - Pattern Template, Chapter 7 - Pattern Library, Chapter 8 - Teaching Yourself or Students with Pattern Languages, Section IV - Introductory Pattern Exercises, Chapter 9 - Intro to Exercises, Chapter 10 - Problems, Chapter 11 - Basic Pattern Exercise, Chapter 12 - Structural Exercises (2-8), Chapter 13 - Focused Patterns (9-12), Chapter 14 - Patterns That Break the Mold (13-15), Section V - The Fifteen Properties, Chapter 15 - Taking a Step Back, Chapter 16 - Fifteen Fundamental Properties of Wholeness , Section VI - Advanced Pattern Generation Exercises, Chapter 17 - Advanced Pattern-Generation Exercises (16-24), Section VII - Patterns for Game Mechanics, Chapter 18 - Atomic Theory of Game Mechanics (25-33), Section VIII - How Our Patterns Relate to Ourselves and the World, Chapter 19 - Implications of Patterns as a Design Framework, Section IX - Advanced Patterns for Game Mechanics, Chapter 20 - Patterns on the Consequences of Mechanics, Section X - Building a Language, Chapter 21 - Integrating Patterns from Other Sources, Chapter 22 - Connecting Patterns into a Language, Chapter 23 - Organizing and Maintaining a Pattern Language, Chapter 24 - Creating New Pattern Exercises, Chapter 25 - Exercise for Extracting Patterns from Written Analysis, Chapter 26 - Extracting Patterns from Designer Experience, Chapter 27 - Designing with a Pattern Language, Afterword, References
