Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design

Chapter 1. What Is Game Design?

Humans have been devising and playing games for thousands of years. There is hot debate about which existing game is the oldest; some argue for Go (shown in Figure 1.1) and some for the African stone game Awari, but the first game ever devised is almost certainly lost to us today. The field of game design is as ancient as the human neocortex and is clearly related to our capacity to pretend, for pretending—that is, creating and playing in an artificial world—is at the heart of all games. Some, such as Go and chess, were perfected so long ago that their rules have not changed for centuries. Other games come on the market, enjoy a brief popularity, and fade away again. People are always interested in new games, ...