Christopher Barney is an industry veteran, with over a decade of experience designing and engineering games like Poptropica and teaching at Northeastern University. He has spoken at conferences including GDC, DevCom, and PAX on topics from core game design to social justice. Seeking degrees in game design before formal game design programs existed, Chris built his own undergraduate and graduate curricula out of offerings in sociology, computer science, and independent study. In pursuit of a broad understanding of games, he has worked on projects spanning interactive theater, LARP design, board games, and tabletop RPGs. An extensive collection of his essays of game design topics can be found on his development blog at [...].

Section I Introduction

Chapter 1 ¿ Introduction 3

Section II Background

Chapter 2 ¿ Background on A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander 21

Chapter 3 ¿ Background on the Use of Pattern Languages in Other Fields 29

Chapter 4 ¿ Background on the Use of Patterns in Game Design 35

Section III An Introduction to Patterns in Game Design

Chapter 5 ¿ An Introduction to Patterns in Game Design 53

Chapter 6 ¿ Common Problems in Proposed Patterns 69

Section IV Pattern Exercises

Chapter 7 ¿ Pattern Exercises 77

Chapter 8 ¿ Basic Pattern Exercise 79

Chapter 9 ¿ Structural Pattern Exercises 89

Chapter 10 ¿ Focused Patterns 147

Chapter 11 ¿ Patterns That Break the Mold 185

Section V The Fifteen Properties

Chapter 12 ¿ Taking a Step Back: What We Have Learned So Far 217

Chapter 13 ¿ The "Fifteen Fundamental Properties of Wholeness" in Game Design 219

Section VI Advanced Pattern-Generation Exercises

Chapter 14 ¿ Advanced Pattern-Generation Exercises 241

Section VII Building a Language

Chapter 15 ¿ Connecting Patterns into a Language 313

Chapter 16 ¿ Organizing and Maintaining a Pattern Language 333

Chapter 17 ¿ Creating New Pattern Exercises 375

Chapter 18 ¿ Designing with a Pattern Language 379

Chapter 19 ¿ Teaching Yourself or Students with Pattern Languages 385