Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  What's On the Designer's Bookshelf? (23 Feb 2005) For pure theory, I look no farther than Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals (MIT Press, 2004). This massive, comprehensive book dissects games, play, and gameplay down to their atomic components and discusses them in detail. It tends to consider non-digital and digital games interchangeably, since rules are rules wherever you are. If you want to know about the effects of positive and negative feedback, or the difference between a cheater and a spoil-sport, this is the place to come. It also includes numerous references to the great theoretical works of Huizinga, Callois, and Sutton-Smith, among others, so it's an excellent starting point for deeper reading. Article URL: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050223/adams_01.shtml Read 352 more articles from Game Development Network sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Consumer Evolution  Gender Inclusive Game Design: Expanding the Market by Sheri Graner Ray  Buy from Amazon .com | .uk | .ca | .fr | .de |  High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games by Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson  Buy from Amazon .com | .uk | .ca | .fr | .de |  Trigger Happy: Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution by Steven Poole  Buy from Amazon .com | .uk | .ca | .fr | .de |  Core Techniques and Algorithms in Game Programming by Daniel Sanchez-Crespo Dalmau, Daniel Sanchez-Crespo  Buy from Amazon .com | .uk | .ca | .fr | .de |  Rules of Play : Game Design Fundamentals by Katie Salen, Eric Zimmerman  Buy from Amazon .com | .uk | .ca | .fr | .de |  Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design by Andrew Rollings, Ernest Adams  Buy from Amazon .com | .uk | .ca | .fr | .de |     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy