Product Description: Characteristics of Games offers a new way to understand games: by focusing on certain traits--including number of players, rules, degrees of luck and skill needed, and reward/effort ratio--and using these characteristics as basic points of comparison and analysis...read more

Product Description: For many players, games are entertainment, diversion, relaxation, fantasy. But what if certain games were something more than this, providing not only outlets for entertainment but a means for creative expression, instruments for conceptual thinking, or tools for social change? In Critical Play, artist and game designer Mary Flanagan examines alternative games--games that challenge the accepted norms embedded within the gaming industry--and argues that games designed by artists and activists are reshaping everyday game culture...read more

Product Description: 21st Century Game Design is not just a book about game design. It's an answer to two important questions: who are we designing games for and how do we do it best? Written by industry pros, the book teaches designers how to design better games from a why perspective...read more

Discusses the essential elements in creating a successful game, how playing games and learning are connected, and what makes a game boring or fun.

Product Description: Smart trainers know that games and activities can involve adults in learning like no other instructional method and no one knows more about games than Sivasailam "Thiagi" Thiagarajan. In this must-have resource, Thiagi shows you how to customize more than thirty different kinds of games -- games that fit the circumstances perfectly and that can be designed in mere minutes...read more

Product Description: This is a collection of twelve new projects for making wooden toys and games, building on the groundwork covered in the authors' first book, published in 1995. The new projects are more complex and require improving woodworking skills, but are explained in the same clear style with line drawings and photographs...read more

Provides instructions for making and playing a variety of games for one and two people and for groups, using common household materials