Think Like a Game Designer: The Step-by-Step Guide to Unlocking Your Creative Potential Audiobook By Justin Gary cover art

Think Like a Game Designer: The Step-by-Step Guide to Unlocking Your Creative Potential

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Think Like a Game Designer: The Step-by-Step Guide to Unlocking Your Creative Potential

By: Justin Gary
Narrated by: Justin Gary
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Do you love gaming? Do you have ideas for games of your own and want to learn how to produce them professionally?

Longtime game designer Justin Gary has the answers you seek. After 20 years in the gaming industry, creating such games as Solforge, Ascension, and the World of Warcraft Miniatures Game, Justin is now sharing all his secrets in Think Like a Game Designer. Best of all, Justin’s secrets are really simple, practical, and common sense steps you can take yourself.

Justin will walk you through each step and provide exercises for you to formulate your own game concepts and bring them to fruition.

In Think Like a Game Designer, you will learn how to:

  • Overcome mental blocks to great creative work
  • Understand players’ emotional reactions and evoke the right ones
  • Brainstorm ideas and then refine them into useable ones
  • Follow the six steps of the core design loop for successfully designing a game
  • Capitalize on the excitement of Big Moments in a game
  • Get a job in the game industry and get your games published
  • Remove the grind of gaming or use it to your advantage
  • Integrate monetization into your designs
  • Deliver an enjoyable experience to your players so your game stands the test of time

Whether you want to create video games, board games, or just discover how a true creative mind works, it’s all here in Think Like a Game Designer. It’s time to take the first step toward your game designer dream. Are you game?

©2018 Justin Gary (P)2021 Justin Gary Career Success Employment Programming & Software Development Career Game Technology Software Development Software Video Game Programming
Practical Design Approach • Comprehensive Creative Process • Valuable Design Techniques • Insightful Prototyping Advice
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Very insightful and engaging dive into designing your own games by a veteran who made it through doing, without formal education. Lots of aiding resources as well. I would still get the physical book to flip through the pages as needed.

Insightful easy listen

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I'm just a regular fiction author but this book helped give me tips and motivation for my next project and maybe even picking up old projects to make better.

not a game designer, but still applicable

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As a person who has tried to create my own games, I was drawn to this title for a number of reasons. Listening to Justin's personal stories and going through the core design loop have allowed me to take my designs from ideas on paper to physical prototypes, and hopefully eventually, to a place where publishing is possible.

Justin goes through his entire creative process from start to finish, mixing in exercises at the end of chapters to allow you to apply his lessons to your games. He goes through a deep, step-by-step walkthrough of how designers should think, perceive game mechanics, and refine their own ideas by removing ego and focusing on player experience. Justin also introduces the parts of game design that are often overlooked by outsiders, such as focusing on cheap prototypes instead of polished products. In addition to the core design loop, Justin also offers advice and insight into the final stages of pitching and publishing a finished product.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to anyone with any interest in game design, whether casually or professionally. I'm looking forward to seeing my games come to life using these lessons!

Valuable Process and Insight Into Game Design

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This book is full of good advice, useful stategy, and great perspective. It's well worth a listen.

Very motivating.

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This audiobook is great and presents good ideas for game building and also helping you avoid common things that your audience would turn from your game. The concepts in this book can also be applied to writing stories or doing other projects outside of developing a game.

Key ideas

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This book is straight-forward and super helpful. As a game designer, I cannot wait to implement the many techniques described in this book.

Excellent Book for game designers

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As a lifelong gamer, and game development hobbist, I found many aspects of his creation process insightful. I wish more time had been spent diving into a few topics in more detail, but it was a great process for getting started with game development.

Gaming Inspiration

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Having read many books in game design, this one is the most practical. It presents a detailed and useful program for game design. For me especially useful was the section on game mechanics.

Practical

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Fantastic book with solid information. Listening to a second time. One or two spoken links provided are outdated/broken, unfortunately.

Excellent

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I dont review books often but I don't want people to spend money on this without knowing what they are in for. As I read this book I noticed there are a tremendous amount of unnecessary quotes from irrelevant people. while there is some knowledge hidden in this book, it's mostly the author babbling and giving the impression he is teaching. The author may be a game developer, but his writing skills are at a high-school level. If you have the spare change, get the book. If you are looking for a good resource, go somewhere else.

Do you like quotes?

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