I'm Writing a Book on Game Design for iOS, Facebook, and the Web: Readers, Get a 40% Discount Code -- Developers Reading This, Get in Touch With Me!

I promised an announcement on Monday, and now here it is -- I'm thrilled to say I have a new book coming out later this year: Game Design Secrets for iOS, Facebook, and the Web, with a focus on design elements key to marketing and monetization. All three platforms have opened up huge opportunities for low budget/indie game production especially, and my hope is this book helps developers turn their passion for games into a full-time profession and thriving business. It'll include expert advice and insights from many successful designers, including some developers you'll recognize from their work in Second Life. I'd love to include many more, so:

If you're an SL game developer interested in expanding or exporting your game to the Web, iOS, or Facebook, please get in touch with me -- I want to know about your plans, and possibly include them in the book. E-mail me at wjamesau at well dot com.

And thanks to the folks at Wiley, the book's publisher, anyone reading this can get a pre-order discount of 40%:

Preorder Game Design Secrets from Wiley.com and get 40% off of the print version. Enter “GDS12” at checkout. Offer available through 8/31/12.

More info on the book in coming months. Meantime, if you're a developer, please hit me up -- and if you're friends with a developer, please send them this link!

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Comments

[Arcadia Codesmith]

Frankly, the most interesting entries out there at the moment are those with no marketing and rudimentary monetization.

Zynga's been doing a bang-up job innoculating the player population against the "operant conditioning as game" model".

Meanwhile, Star Wars: The Old Republic is suffering the bitter backlash of marketing overhype, and it seems as if Guild Wars 2 may be looking at the same fate.

Lessons learned: don't build your game around an abusive revenue model, and don't let marketing oversell you as the best thing since sliced bread when you're not (and you're probably not).

Instead, if you want a game you can point at and be proud of twenty or thirty years down the road, focus your resources on building a solid community, listen to the community, deliver for the community, and let them be your enthusiastic volunteer marketers.

[Adeon Writer]

Minecraft I think is a great example of that, the game has never been officially advertised in any form, it's entire popularity was spread by word of mouth. The only hype you get are from actual players.