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Book of Lenses (2008) — A Hundred Ways to Look at a Game
Published in 2008, The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses introduced 100 questions for looking at a game. A historian's look at where that idea came from, and how it still reaches today's puzzle designers.
The MDA Framework (2004) — Three Words Puzzle Designers Still Use
In 2004, a few-page paper presented at an AAAI workshop reshaped the vocabulary of game design. Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek formalized Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics. This piece follows those three words from Doug Church's unfinished 1999 homework, through a GDC workshop room, into the real project Oasis, and onto the shelf we now call Steam.
The Art of Computer Game Design (1984) — The First Book That Tried to Define What a Game Is
In 1984, Chris Crawford — a game designer who had just been laid off by Atari — wrote a book: The Art of Computer Game Design. It was the world's first serious attempt to define a game itself, through four elements: representation, interaction, conflict, and safety. This essay traces the early-1980s context that produced the book, the small living-room gathering he started the following years that grew into today's GDC, and why his definition still fuels academic debate today.
