Aspiring game designers can save on the recently released new edition of one of the most popular game development reference books. Level Up: The Guide to Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers is discounted to $36.70 (was $50) at Amazon. This deal applies to the 3rd Edition of Level Up, which was published in December, a full decade after the 2nd Edition. If you’ve ever looked for game design books, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Level Up near the top of your searches. Amazon’s deal brings the price of the 3rd Edition within a dollar of the 2nd Edition.
$36.70 (was $50)
Level Up covers a wide array of game design topics across its 600-plus pages, from creating design documents and optimizing gameplay controls to building levels and crafting a narrative that gels with the gameplay. The lessons are accompanied by over 400 drawings to help readers visualize the concepts.
The 3rd Edition of Level Up adds two additional chapters. Since the 2nd Edition was published way back in 2014, the text has been updated to reflect modern industry trends and platforms. Level Up is geared toward designers working on projects for PC, mobile, console, or VR/AR. The two new chapters focus on playtesting your game and designing experiences for virtual and augmented reality.
Written by industry veteran Scott Rogers, Level Up has been a mainstay on bestseller charts since its initial publication in 2010. Rogers has dozens of credits to his name across the last three decades, including God of War, Pac-Man World, and Darksiders. Beyond video games, Rogers has also worked as a designer on tabletop games such as Marvel Villainous and Alien: Fate of the Nostromo.
If you’re looking to build up a library of game development books, there are several other titles worth grabbing, many of which are on sale right now. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell takes a novel approach by presenting you with over 100 sets of questions for viewing a game’s design, and Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster takes you deep into the influences that underlie modern video game design. Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding legend Hideo Kojima also wrote a book called The Creative Gene that one examines how movies and stories influenced his work across the decades.
Some other books worth looking at are Significant Zero: Heroes, Villains, and the Fight for Art and Soul in Video Games by Spec Ops: The Line writer Walt Williams and Blood, Sweat, and Pixels by Jason Schrier. While these aren’t about game design, they are invaluable for gaining an understanding into the turbulent video game industry. Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction is also worth considering–even if it is geared primarily at budding sci-fi and fantasy writers–as it’s an accessible guide to building worlds within works of fiction.
