Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development

Make Great Games with Unity.

If you want to design and develop games, there is no substitute for strong, hands-on experience with modern techniques and tools. That is exactly what this book provides. Leading instructor and indie game developer Jeremy Gibson Bond covers all three disciplines that you need to succeed: game design theory, rapid iterative prototyping, and practical programming.

Building on two previous best-sellers, this Third Edition contains hundreds of improvements across more than 400 new pages, all designed to make it even easier to understand and more useful in modern game development.

The five game tutorials have been thoroughly revised and expanded to cover even more best practices for prototyping and development, and all examples now use Unity 2020.3 LTS (Long Term Support), a stable and feature-rich standard for years to come. The new content includes greatly enhanced tutorials, a chapter on Unity's high-performance Data-Oriented Tech Stack (DOTS), new Coding Challenges to help you transition to making your own games from scratch, and tips on next steps after you have finished the book. The revamped website includes playable versions of all example games, plus an exciting new tool that provides immediate feedback on potential errors in your own code.

Preview sample pages from Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development >

Jeremy Gibson Bond is a Professor of Practice teaching game design and development at Michigan State University, which in 2022 was ranked the #1 public university for undergraduate game development by Princeton Review three of the last four years. Since 2013, he has served the IndieCade independent game festival and conference as the Chair of Education and Advancement, where he co-chairs the IndieXchange summit each year and has also chaired the GameU summit. In 2013, Jeremy founded the company ExNinja Interactive, through which he develops his independent game projects. He also created the official Unity Certified Programmer Exam Review specialisation on Coursera, which thousands of developers (including several Unity employees) used to prepare for the UCP exam from 2018-2022.

Jeremy has worked as a programmer and prototyper for companies such as Human Code and frog design; has taught classes for Great Northern Way Campus (in Vancouver, BC), Texas State University, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Austin Community College, and the University of Texas at Austin; and has worked for Walt Disney Imagineering, Maxis, and Electronic Arts/Pogo.com, among others.

A hands-on book that explains concepts "by doing," Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development, Third Edition , takes students through the process of making both paper and digital game prototypes. Rather than focusing on a single tutorial, as most Unity books have done, this book explores several small prototypes, reinforcing critical concepts through repetition from project to project. Author Jeremy Gibson Bond's approach creates a stable of "base projects" that serve as starters for readers looking to create their own games), while skipping the aspects of project creation (e.g. modeling, animation, etc.) that are less central to this book. Intermediate students may browse this book for a tutorial that clarifies the specific prototyping or programming concept that they wish to learn. This book begins with an introduction to general game design concepts and basic programing concepts. C# is the chosen language used in this book, and it is easy to learn and enforces good coding practices. Game prototyping and programming tutorials use Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), the standard for coding over the past 30+ years, in addition to the new Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) and Entity Component System (ECS), providing a well-rounded approach. Game development concepts covered help students find further resources to expand their game design knowledge.

A hands-on book that explains concepts "by doing," Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development, Third Edition , takes readers through the process of making both paper and digital game prototypes. Rather than focusing on a single tutorial, as most Unity books have done, this book explores several small prototypes, reinforcing critical concepts through repetition from project to project. Author Jeremy Gibson Bond's approach creates a stable of "base projects" that serve as starters for readers looking to create their own games), while skipping the aspects of project creation (e.g. modeling, animation, etc.) that are less central to this book. Intermediate readers may browse this book for a tutorial that clarifies the specific prototyping or programming concept that they wish to learn. This book begins with an introduction to general game design concepts and basic programing concepts. C# is the chosen language used in this book, and it is easy to learn and enforces good coding practices. Game prototyping and programming tutorials use Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), the standard for coding over the past 30+ years, in addition to the new Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) and Entity Component System (ECS), providing a well-rounded approach. Game development concepts covered help readers find further resources to expand their game design knowledge.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.