The Focal Press Game Design Workshops was created as a means to bring real-world experience and practicality to both game design students and professionals. The books in this series are developed with strong foundational pedagogy and accompanied with robust learning resources for both students and instructors, including video tutorials, test materials, practical exercises and more.
This series is continually being developed to match common game design and development curriculum so it can be utilized in different programs and at different levels.
Forthcoming titles:
The Game Narrative Toolbox: A Practical Journey Through Narrative Design
The GameMaker Standard
Becoming a Video Game Artist: From Portfolio Design to Landing the Job
A Framework for Game Production: Reducing the Cone of Uncertainty
Series Editor Heather Maxwell Chandler is a veteran game producer with experience at Activision, EA, and Ubisoft. She's also the founder of Media Sunshine, Inc., (www.mediasunshine.com) a company that provides game production contract services to developers, publishers, and vendors. She has contributed to the production of Apocalypse, Civilization: Call to Power, Heavy Gear 2, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, and eight games in the Ghost Recon series. She's the author of The Game Production Handbook, Third Edition, The Game Localization Handbook, Second Edition and Fundamentals of Game Development.
By Tobias Heussner, Toiya Kristen Finley, Jennifer Brandes Hepler, Ann Lemay
August 16, 2023
Learn how to create compelling game storylines. Four experienced narrative designers from different genres of game development have banded together to create this all-inclusive guide on what it's like to work as a writer and narrative designer in the video game industry. From concept to final ...
By Jere Miles
July 25, 2016
In introducing new students to video game development, there are two crucial components to consider: design and implementation. Unity 3D and PlayMaker Essentials: Game Development from Concept to Publishing provides theoretical background on topics such as characters, stories, level design, ...
By David Vinciguerra, Andrew Howell
December 08, 2015
This book teaches students and entry-level novices how to create games using the GameMaker engine. Readers will quickly hone their design skills with tutorials that are written so that beginners can quickly start building games while also providing lessons on how designers can ‘level up’ and add ...