David Perry on Game Design A strategy guide for game designers. It covers various aspects of game design including game basics, worlds, stories, and characters, and objects. Full description
This book is really good for seeking idea. Some of them I have never though of.
But, this is not a good idea to bring this book to create your whole game world. You just need one or two element in thousand and thousand idea.
If you are designing a game, don't try to put all of those element into your game, it will make your game no unity. Your game became chaos.
Lesson Learn: Create most detail your game-element if you can. If you create character, think a about where she live, what she like, or even her behavior. Immerse and connect all element is the key to be success.
This was an interesting book: at times, it had some really great ideas - but at other times, I wondered if the authors had bothered with having an editor read it.
The format of this book is a short amount of text with a lot of long lists of examples. The presentation the material was very unbalanced and often repetitive; but, that withstanding, the material itself was often quite interesting.
This could have been a fantastic two-part book. Part one: a core introduction of mostly "text" at maybe 1/10th the total length and only short lists of with the most poignant examples. Part two: a large appendix (perhaps available online only?) to contain the many, lengthy, usually-but-not-always-thought-provoking lists of examples.