An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious fram ework for understanding them to date.As pop culture, games are as important as f ilm or television -- but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for loo king at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video ga mes. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of P lay as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and meth odologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of intera ctive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like ""play,"" ""design,"" a nd ""interactivity."" They look at games through a series of eighteen ""game design schemas,"" or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as site s of cultural resistance.Written for game scholars, game developers, and interac tive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical gui de. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical frame work for the emerging discipline of game design.