The Game Development Strategy Guide

Some of today’s most popular video games have been on the market for decades, while others barely make it days before disappearing forever. What differentiates the games that survive? This expansive look at modern video game development gives you an end-to-end, cross-disciplinary understanding of the people, processes, and core design principles you’ll need to create video games that thrive.

Who Should Read This Book

This book is for anyone and everyone interested in working on and creating games, including the
following people:

• Aspiring game developers of any discipline.
• Veteran game developers looking to reframe their understanding of game development to account for modern trends and standards.
• Creative leaders who need to build and support environments where great video games are created.
• Game designers trying to improve their understanding of the business considerations that have felled so many recent games.
• User experience designers looking to understand, define, and expand their impact in the broader video game market.
• Producers struggling with the choice of business model or monetization choices for their games.
• Partners to video game developers like legal counsel, business development, venture capitalists, marketing, licensing, and human relations.

Takeaways

• Sets a standard for basic game design principles.
• Gives a foundation in the science and art of universal player motivation, critical to informing decisions about the game.
• Demystifies the modern gaming business, including live-service games.
• Walks through the roles that people and companies play in the game development process.
• Provides a common language for game development techniques.
• Shows how to achieve creative ideation and learn prioritization techniques.
• Explores more advanced design topics to help games thrive over time.
• Highlights how to design games that encourage positive social experiences.
• Defines modern video gaming monetization techniques.
• Codifies common ethical and legal issues.
• Provides a shared understanding of key video games hardware, software, engines, and platforms.
• Explores what works and what doesn’t in gaming—showing common patterns in the industry and design struggles.
• Gives insights that will apply to teams and games of any size—from indie games to mega games
• Highlights an oversight of the industry for nonindustry partners who need to understand game development, including the business development and legal areas.

Design That Scales

After years of building the same interface elements, some designers and developers get wise and try to create reusable, common solutions to help everyone stop reinventing the wheel every time. Most fail. In Design That Scales, design systems expert Dan Mall draws on his extensive experience helping some of the world’s most recognizable brands create design practices that are truly sustainable and successful.

Who Should Read This Book?

People who are building and maintaining design systems, large or small. Designers, engineers, and product managers who are in search of a more efficient way to work. Leaders and executives who want to effect change but aren’t sure how to do it. People who have designed web forms and tables, but don’t know what’s next.

Takeaways

• A design system is crucial for any organization managing two or more digital products. Learn how to create, manage, and sustain a successful design system.
• See how the ecosystem of a design system works in order to understand the context for success.
• Figure out where the people involved in a design system fit and how they can best collaborate.
• Learn the metrics for success within a design system and how to measure them.
• Determine the best techniques for marketing your design system to stakeholders.
• Learn what guidance and relationships are crucial for a design system to succeed.
• See the end-of-chapter questions that highlight how to guide your design system to a profitable outcome.

Conversations with Things

Welcome to the future, where you can talk with the digital things around you: voice assistants, chatbots, and more. But these interactions can be unhelpful and frustrating—sometimes even offensive or biased. Conversations with Things teaches you how to design conversations that are useful, ethical, and human-centered—because everyone deserves to be understood, especially you.

Who this book is for

• Design practitioners involved in creating digital products, who are beginning their journey into conversational interfaces.
• Developers who have built voice or chatbot projects, but may not be familiar with advanced design – or even what it truly means to design something.
• Other non-technical members of the team, like PMs and BAs who need to understand the process, and sales reps new to conversational interface products.

Liftoff!

Liftoff! is your guide to leveling up as a design manager and leader. Its experience-driven approach—written by designers for designers—will help you hire and scale teams, develop careers, learn why diversity matters to your business, and solidify design’s role in your organization. Liftoff! will elevate your skills to lead your team and company to new heights.

Designing Agentive Technology

Advances in narrow artificial intelligence make possible agentive systems that do things directly for their users (like, say, an automatic pet feeder). They deliver on the promise of user-centered design, but present fresh challenges in understanding their unique promises and pitfalls. Designing Agentive Technology provides both a conceptual grounding and practical advice to unlock agentive technology’s massive potential.

Surveys That Work

Surveys That Work explains a seven-step process for designing, running, and reporting on a survey that gets accurate results. In a no-nonsense style with plenty of examples about real-world compromises, the book focuses on reducing the errors that make up Total Survey Error—a key concept in survey methodology. If you are conducting a survey, this book is a must-have.

Access extra content on Caroline’s website here.

We Need to Talk

Drawing from psychology, neuroscience, and years of real-world experience, We Need to Talk provides a practical framework for navigating difficult conversations with confidence and empathy. Whether you’re dealing with workplace conflicts, team dynamics, or challenging personal discussions, this book equips you with the tools to transform confrontational situations into opportunities for growth and understanding. No scripts, no shortcuts—just proven strategies that work.

Who Should Read This Book

If you work with other humans, this book is for you. Whether you’re a leader trying to build psychological safety on your team, an individual contributor navigating tricky workplace dynamics, or someone who wants to get better at having hard conversations, you’ll find practical tools here. While the examples come primarily from technology and creative fields, the framework works across industries and various roles. You’ll learn how to transform potentially confrontational situations into opportunities for growth and understanding, all while staying true to your authentic communication style. This isn’t about becoming a conflict expert—it’s about you feeling confident and capable when those inevitable tough conversations arise.

Takeaways

• Learn the core principles underlying difficult conversations.
• Delve into how your brain processes conflict.
• Study a multitude of techniques for maintaining psychological safety.
• Learn to apply practical solutions to solving real-world problems.
• Practice handling difficult conversations in your own authentic way.
• Figure out specific techniques for staying centered, asking the right questions, and keeping your cool when caught off guard.
• Learn how to navigate the tricky waters of conflict when you don’t agree with your boss.
• Study de-escalation techniques for a tense situation in order to guide conversations back to productive territory.
• Say no and mean it!

Theme 3: Discussion

Join today’s speakers for Q&A and discussion of the day’s topics.

Steve Sanderson and Lou Rosenfeld discuss how big organizations can hatch bold ideas.

Lou Rosenfeld and Steve Sanderson break down ways designers can use experimentation as a tool for innovation in enterprises. Steve also gives a preview to hot topics to be covered around innovating in big business at Enterprise UX, San Antonio, TX, May 13-15.

Making Conferences More Accessible with Darryl Adams, Intel’s Director of Accessibility

With the surge in popularity and need for hybrid and virtual events, Lou sits down with Intel’s Director of Accessibility, Darryl Adams, to discuss how technology can make in-person and virtual conferences more accessible and inclusive to speakers and audience members with disabilities. He also speaks to how accessible conference design can be improved and fine-tuned for speakers with disabilities, and help those without disabilities feel more comfortable presenting. What kind of accessibility principles and design factors should conference hosts consider for audience members with disabilities and those without disabilities when setting up for in-person and virtual events? How does this technology increase engagement and diversity in attendance? Listen as Darryl and Lou touch on all these topics, and more.

Darryl Adams recommends: Demystifying Disability by Emily Ladau