Books
Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure (2019, MIT Press)
Failure is an inevitable part of any creative practice. As game designers, John Sharp and I have grappled with plenty of crises of creativity, false starts, and bad outcomes. Our tool for coping with the many varieties of failure: iteration, the cyclical process of conceptualizing, prototyping, testing, and evaluating. We have found that failure—often hidden, covered up, a source of embarrassment—is the secret ingredient of iterative creative process. In Iterate, we explain how to fail better.
But don’t just listen to us! In this book we talk to ten different creative practitioners and teams: from a chef to a comedian, a toy designer to a skateboarder, all to find out how they’ve dealt with failure in their work. With Iterate, we hope to offer useful lessons for anyone interested in the creative process.
Games, Design and Play: a detailed approach to iterative game design (2016, O’Reilly)
This book offers a play-focused, process-oriented approach for designing games. Drawing on a combined 35 years of design and teaching experience, John Sharp and I link the concepts and elements of play to the practical tasks of game design. Using full-color examples, we reveal how game designers think and work, and illuminate the amazing expressive potential of games. Focusing on practical details, this book guides you from idea to prototype to playtest and fully realized design. You’ll walk through creating a game’s inner workings, including its core actions, themes, and especially its play experience.
fun fact: This had the working title: “The Social Justice Warrior’s Guide to Game Design” in mind when writing this book. I hope it lives up to this promise!
Book Chapters, Articles, and More…
“Playing in Public: the politics of design”, LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, (Spring 2019).
Forward to Resonant Games: Design Principles for Learning Games that Connect Hearts, Minds, and the Everyday, MIT Press, 2018
“Finding the Queerness in Games” in Queer Game Studies: Gender, Sexuality, and a Queer Approach to Game Studies, University of Minnesota, 2017.
“Playable Models and the News/Tensions Between Journalism and Design” with Heather Chaplin and John Sharp, Journalism and Design (The New School) and Knight Foundation Website, 2015.
“Freakin’ hard: Game Curricula about Game Design, Issues and Technology,” co-authored with John Sharp, in Games, Learning and Society: Learning and Meaning in the Digital Age. Ed. Constance Steinkeuhler, Kurt Squire and Sasha Barab. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). pp. 381-402
“Games for a New Climate” with Janot Mendler de Suarez, Pablo Suarez and Carina Bachofen for BU Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Red Cross / Red Crescent Climate Centre, 2012
“Re:Activism: Serendipity in the Streets” with Thomson Guster in Mobile Media Learning, Dikkers, Martin, Coulter eds. ETC Press, 2012
“Planning your Game Jam: Game Design as Pedagogy” with Seann Dikkers and John Martin in Mobile Media Learning, Dikkers, Martin, Coulter eds. ETC Press, 2012
“DataPlay: Experiments in the Ludic Age”, International Journal of Game-Based Learning, Edited by Patrick Felicia. IGI Global, 2011
“Putting vulnerable people at the center of communication for adaptation: The case for knowledge sharing through participatory games and video tools” with Pablo Suarez and Justin Benn, World Resources Report 2010-2011
“Games to explore forecast-based decisions” with Pablo Suarez in: Hellmuth, M. et al. (eds) (2011). A Better Climate for Disaster Risk Management. Climate and Society No. 3. International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia University, New York, USA.
“Reacting to Re:Activism: A Case Study in the Ethics of Design”, in Ethics and Game Design: Teaching Values through Play, D. Gibson and K. Schrier. eds IGI Global
“DATAPLAY: Mapping Game Mechanics to Traditional Data Visualization” with Julia Wargaski, Mike Edwards, Li Kan Yang. Digital Games Research Association (DIGRA) September, 2009.
“Smart Design, Serious Play?”, Cumulus Design Journal, September 2009
“Screen Design,” in Michael Ehrloff and Tim Marshall, eds., Design Dictionary / Wörterbuch Design (Boston/Basel/Berlin: Birkhäuser, 2008)
“Human Factors,” in Michael Ehrloff and Tim Marshall, eds., Design Dictionary / Wörterbuch Design (Boston/Basel/Berlin: Birkhäuser, 2008)
“Mobile Geographies: Design and Ethnography,” with Vyjayanthi Rao, The Journal of Design and Management (2007) 28–29.