Foreword
I have a theory about game designers and teachers. I think that, beneath the possible differences of our
outer appearances, we’re secretly the same; that many of the skills possessed by a good game
designer are the same skills held by a great teacher. Have you ever had a teacher who held a class
spellbound with puzzles and stories? Who showed you simple demonstrations of skills that were easy
for you to understand and copy, but were difficult for you to master? Who gradually, cleverly, helped
you put together pieces of information in your mind, maybe without your even realizing it, until one
day your teacher was able to step aside and watch you do something amazing, something that you
never would have thought was possible.
We video game designers spend a lot of our time finding ways to teach people the skills they need to
play our games, while keeping them entertained at the same time. We sometimes don’t want people to
be aware that we’re teaching them, though—the best tutorial levels that video games open with are
usually the ones that simply seem like the beginning of a thrilling adventure. I was lucky to work at the
award-winning game studio Naughty Dog for eight amazing years, where I was the Lead or Co-Lead
Game Designer on all three PlayStation 3 games in the Uncharted series. Everyone at the studio was
very happy with the sequence that opened our game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. It effectively
taught each player all the basic moves they would need to play the game, while keeping them on the
edge of their seat because of the gripping predicament our hero Nathan Drake found himself in,
dangling over the edge of a cliff in a ruined train carriage.
Video game designers do this kind of thing over and over again as they create digital adventures for
us to play. Working on a sequence of player experiences like those found in the Uncharted games, I
have to stay very focused on what the player has recently learned. I have to present my audience with
interesting situations that use their new skills and that are easy enough that they won’t get frustrated,
but challenging enough that their interest will be held. To do this with complete strangers, through the
channels of communication that a game provides—the graphics of the environments and the characters
and objects within them, the sounds that the game makes, and the interactivity of the game’s controls
—is tremendously challenging. At the same time, it is one of the most rewarding things I know how to
do.
Now that I’ve become a professor, teaching game design in a university setting, I’ve discovered
firsthand just how many of the skills I developed as a game designer are useful in my teaching. I’m
also discovering that teaching is just as rewarding as game design. So it came to me as no surprise
when I discovered that Jeremy Gibson, the author of this book, is equally talented as a game designer
and a teacher, as you’re about to find out.
I first met Jeremy around ten years ago, at the annual Game Developers Conference in Northern
California, and we immediately hit it off. He already had a successful career as a game developer,
and his enthusiasm for game design struck a chord with me. As you’ll see when you begin to read this
book, he loves to talk about game design as a craft, a design practice and an emerging art. Jeremy and
I stayed in touch over the years, as he went back to graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University’s
excellent Entertainment Technology Center to study under visionaries like Doctor Randy Pausch and
Jesse Schell. Eventually, I came to know Jeremy as a professor and a colleague in the Interactive
Media & Games Division of the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California—
part of USC Games, the program in which I now teach.
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