Available in English from Paraglyph Press!	Available in Japanese from O'Reilly Foreword by Masaya Matsuura!
Available in Chinese from Coolman Special foreword for Chinese readers!	Available in Korean from Digital Media Research Special foreword for Korean readers!
A Front Line Award nominee - Game Developer "A convincing manifesto." - Game Informer "Delightful." - Computer Games Magazine "...An instant classic." - Noah Falstein "...the best game design book I have ever read." - David Jaffe, SCEA "A tour you'll be glad to take." - Clay Shirky, NYU "...well-written, timely, passionate and scientifically informed." - Edward Castronova, Indiana U. "You'll never look at fun the same way again." - Cory Doctorow "A must-read." - Dan Arey, Naughty Dog "Buy it and read it." - Dave Sirlin, Backbone Entertainment "Brilliant." - Greg Costikyan "I've handed out close to 15 copies of this book so far..." - Paul Stephanouk, Big Huge Games "You should buy the book immediately." - Dr. Richard Bartle	"Get it and read it." - Steve Jackson ***** of 5 - Midwest Book Review **** of 4 - Training Media Review "Entertaining, thoughtful, an excellent job." - Slashdot "Entertaining and innovative... a wide-ranging intellectual foray into what games mean." - BlogCritics.org "An important book." - Nonprofit Online News "A book I sincerely believe everyone should have read at least once in their lifetime." - GameDev.net "I'll never look at game design in quite the same way again." - Grimwell.com "Essential reading." - Alan Emrich "You'll end up going 'Woah.'" - The Fat Man "One of the best books for our industry." - Scott Miller "Mandatory reading." - Jessica Mulligan

Welcome to the website for my book A Theory of Fun for Game Design. This website is intended to serve as a companion piece to the book.

Now posted! My GDC 2005 Talk A GRAMMAR OF GAMEPLAY: Game Design Atoms, Can Games Be Diagrammed?

Now posted! My Training Fall 2005 Talk WHY GAMES MATTER

What is A Theory of Fun?
Back in 2003, I was asked by the Austin Game Conference to present a keynote. The result was a talk called "A Theory of Fun," which has since landed on several university required reading lists.

A year goes by, and surprise! A much larger version of that talk is now a book from Paraglyph Press.

OK, but what is it about?
It's about

• What fun is
• Why some games are fun and some games are boring
• How different people respond to different kinds of fun
• What makes a game fun or not
• How games fit into the wider human culture
• Whether games can be art
• What degree of social responsibility game makers need to have
• How games can develop

What's different from the original talk?
Twice as many cartoon pages. Much better art. And twelve chapters of text that make up the meat of the book. If you weren't actually at the conference where the talk was presented, you probably haven't heard any of the material that is in the text.

And there are gratuitous penguins.

Anything else?
Yeah--half the book is cartoons. The penguin and alligator lounging up there make lots of appearances. We're working on getting these guys and many of the other cartoons available on t-shirts and mousepads and other such crass merchandise soon.

Where can I get it?
Fine bookstores everywhere, starting in mid-November. And also at:

• Amazon.com
• Barnes & Noble
• O'Reilly