The depth of my to-be-read bookshelf continues to amaze me. Back in 2013 I listened to a Dork Forest podcast episode with Scott Rogers talking about his love of Disneyland. He also mentioned having just published “Swipe This!” a book on game development for touchscreens. Being a compulsive book purchaser, I ordered his new book, as well as an earlier title “Level UP” on arcade game design. At the time I had a vision of creating a game where your phone was a 2-D plane in a 3-D world that combined with some unspecified psycho-visual phenomena, would yield a fleeting 3-D image to the player. I still haven’t found the effect, and it probably violates the physics of this universe, but I at least got around to reading the book.
In a nutshell, the book contains lists of things to consider at different stages of development, some guidelines, and of course things not to do. The first theory I remember standing out, was the Triangle of Weirdness. That says between characters, activities, and the world, at most two can be weird. The idea being that each game needs at least one aspect that the player can immediately relate to while understanding the rest. Otherwise the experience becomes overwhelming. For my own example, while trees bleeding corn syrup constantly running away from you in a world that defies linear movement might make an interesting art installation, it would not make a good GAME.
Other topics include balancing difficulty verses helping a player forward. There is a tendency to make games too difficult because the developers become the best players in the world and loose track of what a first-time player experiences. Or the importance of keeping action on-screen. If a projectile goes high enough to exit the screen, it takes the user out of the game until it comes back into view (or potentially never does). This can be addressed by scaling the scene, or dynamically zooming out then back in when it lands.
The marketing aspect of a game seems the most daunting. Back in 2012, the iPhone App Store showed the 200 most recently released games, and it took only 3-4 days to be pushed off the list by new arrivals. After that the user could only find your game by searching for the title, unless it takes off. This situation can only have gotten worse. Game releases require the same sickening level of marketing that Hollywood movies do. A weekend flash in a pan or bust. You better have something special or your game development is a waste of money.
The book if fully indexed so you can revisit certain topics. I appreciated that when it was time to review the elements of the Triangle of Weirdness. If you are going to help develop a touchscreen games, Swipe This! is worth your time.
