Game Thinking: Innovate smarter & drive deep engagement with design techniques from hit games

by Amy Jo Kim, Scott Kim (Illustrator), Raph Koster (Foreword)

How are market leading products born?Successful innovations may end up reaching a mainstream audience—but they never start off that way. That’s the paradox of innovation, most entrepreneurs fail to the typical people in your market are not the same ones you need to woo when bringing your idea to life.

Instead find the “superfans” hidden in your Those willing to take risk and put up with a messy or incomplete solution in order to start solving the problem your product will eliminate in the future. Show your idea to these people. See what they make of it. What do they love about it? Where does it seem to go in the wrong direction? Allowing these early fans to “play” with your idea gives you fast and accurate answers to your most pressing questions long before your product is designed and built.

Game Thinking supercharges your progressThat’s where Game Thinking comes in. In this groundbreaking book, Amy Jo Kim lays out a step-by-step system for accelerating innovation, and crafting products that people love...and keep loving. The secret? Develop “impossible to put down” products by using techniques that the fast-moving games industry employs when making games that glue millions of players to their screens.

During her time working on genre-defining games like The Sims, Rock Band, and Ultima Online, Amy Jo learned that customers stick with products that help them get better at something they care about, like playing an instrument or leading a team. Amy Jo then used her insights from the game world to help hundreds of companies like Netflix, Disney, The New York Times, Ubisoft and Happify innovate faster and smarter.

Learn from the (game) mastersBuilding on the principles of lean/agile design and design thinking, Game Thinking covers four powerful strategies you can use to create your next hit

Build a product that fits how people actually behave, using insights from your high-need SuperfansKeep customers engaged and moving forward with a coherent and compelling customer journeyRapidly improve your product concept by testing and tuning the core experienceExpand the core experience into a full product by following the Game Thinking roadmapGet your hands on Game Thinking, and start innovating faster and smarter today.

Genres: Design, Business, Game Design, Entrepreneurship, Nonfiction

215 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 31, 2018

Reviews

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Good Weekend Read
for anyone who is interested in innovation, lean startup, gamification, design thinking, and product design.

The concept is clearly explained in the book; a step-by-step methodology to help bring early product ideas to life is offered, however, there is a lack of sourcing of some ideas.

Actionable and practice-oriented guides, examples and worksheets templates and comments from VIP experts add value to the book.

My insights to remember and try:

Finding and leveraging your super fans (Superfan Screener)
Speed Bumps
The Mastery Path instead of cheap tricks
MPV Canvas
The important steps to get to alpha
Job stories

I found the book easy to follow (especially if you don't have any prior experience in game thinking), beautifully illustrated and a perfect length.

[Toby Beresford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Focused on MVP product development. As expected some excellent tips. Overall this is sound gamification design thinking.

I liked "Feedback alone can have a powerful effect on behavior", the Kim social action matrix looks useful (I hadn't seen it before), the steps to mastery are of course her strongest card.

I also liked the use of quotes in her bibliography - neat. Shall steal that technique for future books!

[Areg Gessas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is okay. it's not the worst design process book however it's got very little new ideas to say. I don't really know who it's for basically it just talks about the iterative process of design but it also doesn't actually go over the basics or the in depth of that idea. It's just kind of framing a mid level over view of it with perspectives from the gaming industry to apply to the non gaming space but kind of for the gaming space. it's not objectively bad there is no messiah story like a lot of business start up books that try and sell their model as the only way. There was a brief foray into academic game design but their contribution is very limited to that and really just reframes some foundational wisdom into types of players and broadens it to types of customers. Nothing in here is going to get my to recommend this book however I know some people that would enjoy it.

I sort of thought this book would include game design ideas because that's what it was sold to me on. Very little of it was that. it was short a one sitting read for me.

[Johannes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book if you are building an early-stage startup and want to increase your probability of success. It provides a clear framwork for bringing you innovation to market fast and focusing on what matters.

Two minuses being that the whole process is a bit hard to follow considering there are so many steps to it. Would love to have an online tool that actually brings it all together in a easy to follow way e.g. in the author’s words a path to mastery. Second one being that the core focus was only on B2C and would’ve loved to see B2B or B2B2C case studies.

[Japan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic guide on Game/ Design Thinking

The book is well organised in the flow of contents.
The book is good for an individual planning to start up a venture
The examples are limited to very few companies, which could have been better.

[Boz · Rating 3 out of 5]

It can't decide if it wants to be about the games industry or about making software. It ends up being generic as to not dive deep enough into either. However, it does serve as a good constant reminder that if you aren't testing with users, you don't know anything.

[Tomas Veras · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, you will find practical ways of managing game development, how to fast iterate over ideas. However, I think it is more pointed to people working in teams, not indie.

[Alessandro Orlandi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buy the lean startup instead, the content is the same

[Brent Maxwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, quick guidebook on how to think about aspects of game design. It felt a little incomplete, but was still useful.