Michael Sellers is Director of the Game Design program and a Professor of Practice at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.

Sellers has worked as a professional game designer since 1994, with a focus on designing social, mobile, and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). He has started and run three successful game studios and has also worked for notable game developers such as 3DO, Electronic Arts, Kabam, and Rumble Entertainment as a lead designer, executive producer, general manager, and creative director.

His first commercial game was the award-winning Meridian 59, the first 3D MMO, released in 1996. He was also the lead designer on The Sims 2, Ultima Online, Holiday Village, Blastron, and Realm of the Mad God, among other games.

In addition to his work in games, Sellers has conducted and published original research in artificial intelligence. His AI research, partly funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), focuses on “social artificial intelligence”–creating agents that behave plausibly in social situations. As part of this effort, Sellers has published groundbreaking work on enabling artificially intelligent agents to learn, form social relationships, and have and express emotions based on a unifying psychological architecture.

Sellers has a BS in cognitive science. In addition to working on games and AI, he has worked as a software engineer, user interface designer, RPG miniatures sculptor, and briefly as a circus roustabout and movie extra.

He has a Bacon number of 2 and hopes someday to have an Erdos number.

Section II. Systemic Game Design: Parts, Loops, and Wholes
6. Overview of Existing and New Frameworks
7. Parts: Nouns and Verbs
8. Loops Creating the Gameplay and Core Loops
9. Wholes Designing the Entire Experience
10. Applying the Plw Framework

Section III. Designing and Developing a Game
11. The Game Concept
12. High-Level and Background Design
13. The Heart of the Matter
14. Detailed Design
15. Early Prototypes, Playtesting, and Iteration
16. The Game Design Document Content and Organization
17. Making Your Game Real

Section IV. Your Future and the Future of Games
18. Building Your Career as a Game Designer
19. The Future of Games

Section V. Suggested Reading and References

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.