The Official GameSalad Guide to Game Development (Explore Our New Media Arts & Design 1st Eds.) 1st Edition

A good intro book to explain how successful games work and should be developed. However, I felt the tutorials on the specific behaviors were not that good or detailed. Many behaviors and rules are never addressed. I think there's market for a textbook that actually gives detailed samples and projects for each behavior and rule that GameSalad offers, couple with actual samples you could try. That would be great. Definitely a nice intro about the software and some of its basic uses. Not very useful if you're interested in learning how to use the many possibilities of this software.

This guide is so well designed and connects so well with the reader but when it comes to the content, it's somewhat flawed. Essentially I was looking for a guide to break down how to use gamesalad, which does not come with much "how to" already. This guide however pretty much just touches on how to make games that already exist. The one thing that I will say about it, this is the best guide to gamesalad that I've seen yet.

GameSalad is such an accessible piece of software that there really isn't much need for a purely technical guide to using it. Such a book would be the functional equivalent of those game 'strategy guides' that cost almost as much as the game itself but don't tell you anything you hadn't already figured out from noodling around with the software for a couple of hours, Instead, Novak and her contributors provide something much more useful: a thorough, yet accessible discussion of the larger issues that you'll face if you use GameSalad with any degree of seriousness.If you have invested in a copy of GameSalad, it's not because you're interested in the software as software. It's because you're interested in creating games. The Official GameSalad Guide tends to start from a fairly high theoretical level, moving from general discussion about how games work and how they're designed to specific discussion about how GameSalad, with its particular capabilities, fits into that big picture. But everything that Novak talks about is an issue with which you will have to come to grips if you make a game, whether it's interface design, creating a prototype or even just figuring out what type of game you're designing. At the same time, she never wanders off into abstraction; each chapter grounds itself in concrete examples that illustrate her points. She also keeps you on your toes by using a textbook-like format for each chapter, ending them with useful thought experiments and peppering her discussions with sidebars containing wisdom about how games work and how to design them.As a succinct, yet wide-ranging guide to the full range of issues -- procedural, rhetorical, technical -- that will face anyone who uses GameSalad to actually design a game, this book is hard to beat. I've been a professional game developer and designer (both digital and tabletop) for the last 15 years and an avid gamer for over 30 years, and I found myself frequently nodding in recognition based on my own experiences as I read through it. Novak even taught me a few things that I hadn't already known. It's an informative piece of work, but more importantly, it gets you to think about what games do and how they do what they do -- and if you believe that you can design a good game without ever grappling with these larger theoretical concerns, let me assure you that if you don't take an interest in them, they will come looking for you.

I kinda feel like I just got ripped off. Now first of all I want to say I am not familiar with Ms. Novaks previous game design books and I don't know if this falls inline with the same design that they are modeled after. But I was hoping for a book to teach me game salad. Something project based. One thing I think is funny is that the book has a spot where it calls Killzone out for using CG in their gameplay trailers to trick gamers into thinking its better. I think this book does the same thing. It's called the "The Official GameSalad Guide to Game Development." I read that and I think ok cool I am going to learn how to make games. Wrong. You are going to learn concepts and if you're lucky she will tell you how to use them "briefly", but only as a "concept" in your games through very very short tutorials. This doesn't happen much either. Then comes the cover of the book. I see would could be life bars, distance measurement, some on screen buttons, and other stuff that made me pretty excited to learn how to do. Nope. Unfortunately this is a game developed by someone else that she just happens to mention in the book. I think this is the equivalent to what Killzone does to trick their viewers. Well there is another book coming out in June. If you're looking for a book to teach you gamesald maybe you should wait for that one in hopes that it actually teaches you the program... I am. Why isn't there a decent book on GameSalad??? This isn't the worst one, but it doesn't teach you the program as the others try too. Sound weird? Well if you read the "GameSalad Beginner's Guide" you would know what I am talking about. That book is really bad. The best one is "Learn GameSalad for iOS". Although not a perfect book either its far more helpful than this book. This book falls some where in between... Actually after writing the review I kinda feel genuinely angry that I just paid $40 for this. It may come slightly useful but this isn't the book to teach you the program. For now go with, "Learn GameSalad for iOS".

Didn't provide explicit technical game development knowledge as it pertains to Game Salad development.

While I agree GameSalad itself is not entirely complicated, this book offers very, very little about developing with GS. I found the information it contains about game development good in general -- which is basically the whole book -- but I feel I wasted a good amount of money in hopes of learning the GS environment in more detail. The title is very misleading. I would not recommend this book to anyone looking to learn the application.

This book helps you understand what games users like to play. It gives some tutorials and gets into the GameSalad set up.

If you want to know about different genres of games, devices, and the history of gaming then this is probably a decent book, but if you want it to learn how to develop a game in GameSalad I wouldn't bother! The book partly takes you through making one game, but the tutorials for this are spread randomly throughout the book (in no sensible order) and from what I can tell seems incomplete. The game itself is very basic and has very few features in it, so when it comes to working on your own game you're probably going to have to look elsewhere for a lot of the information.For an "official guide" it's pretty disappointing!

文字数も多く、訳すのが大変です。翻訳本が出るのを待つか、日本語できる人に読み上げてもらうかしないと辛いです。時間が貴重なデベロッパーさんにはオススメできません。これより、（コーディングなしでスマホゲームを作ろう）こちらを購入してウエブから追加情報を探した方が時間短縮できます。