Editorial Review:
As pop culture, games are as important as film or television--but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games.. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Does this book help you to create good/fun games?  2008-10-20
Simple No. Making games should be fun, playing games should be fun. Why this book makes telling how to create games so academic? When reading this i hope to do something else in every chapter I begin.
IF you love games, if you want to create games.. Please skip this. Go to toy store, read totally different kind of books, draw, listen different kind of music, watch TV, walk outside. Think. You are much better path that using you time reading these kinds of theoretical mammoths.
rules of play  2008-07-27
bought for a class. never really read it. not as theoretical as what i wanted it to be.
An important and relevant book on so many levels  2008-03-01
The authors of this book work directly with the school I attend (Parsons the New School for Design), and I am speaking from experience when I say that these people are authorities on the topics of "play" and game design. This books serves as a resource not just for game design, but in many other fields as well. I have used this book while studying anything that relates to interactivity, education and learning, and sociology. The idea of "play" is an innate characteristic of human beings, and Salen and Zimmerman do a great job of relating this idea in an extremely rich way. If you do anything related to games, play, or game design, this book needs to reside on your shelf.
Too pleased with itself to be great  2007-12-27
Rules of Play has 150 pages of great material spread over 670 pages of text. The definition of meaningful play, the case studies and the troubleshooting tips are very useful. Unfortunately, the book tries to be both a design manual and a textbook. The result is a lot of material which any given reader doesn't need. Trimmed down and split into separate books, this work would get five stars.
Returned 2007-08-09
So, this book was written by MIT faculty in an attempt to legitimize games. Their way of legitimizing games was by being as long-winded as is humanly possible.
Needless to say, this book was not very interesting in the least.
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