Forword(from the frist edition)
The title of this book almost feels wrong to me，as a game desiger,see the words "theory" and "fun" in such close proximity instinctively makes me a bit uncomfortable.Theories are dry and academic things,found in thick books at the back of the library,where as fun is light,energetic,playful and …… well……fun.
对我来说这本书的名字几乎是错的，作为一个游戏开发者，理论和乐趣这两个词这样的接近，让我感到不舒服，理论是枯燥的，学术性的东西，在图书馆里厚厚的书里找到，乐趣是快乐的好玩的。
For the first few decades of （最初的几十年里）interactive game design, we were able to blithely ignore many of the larger meta-questions surrounding our craft while we slowly, painfully learned to walk. Now for the first time we are starting to see serious interest in what we do from the academic side. This is forcing those of us in the games industry to stop and consider,
在互动游戏设计的最初几十年里，我们能够轻松地忽略许多围绕着我们的技术的元问题，同时我们也能够缓慢而痛苦地学会走路。现在，我们第一次从学术的角度看到了人们对我们所做的事情的浓厚兴趣。这迫使我们这些游戏行业的人停下来思考，
“What is this new medium that we’re working in?”
“我们正在开发的新媒体是什么?”
The academic interest seems two fold: First is the recognition that video games probably represent an emerging new medium, a new design field, and possibly a new art form. All of these are worthy of study. Second, there are an increasing number of motivated students that grew up playing these games and now find themselves inspired to work in the field one day. They want to find schools that will help them understand what games are and how to make them.
学术兴趣似乎有两方面:首先，人们认识到电子游戏可能代表着一种新兴媒体，一种新的设计领域，也可能是一种新的艺术形式。这些都是值得研究的。其次，有越来越多的积极的学生，他们从小玩这些游戏长大，现在发现自己受到鼓舞，有一天在这个领域工作。他们希望找到能够帮助他们理解什么是游戏以及如何制作游戏的学校。
One slight problem: there are very few teachers that understand games well enough to teach them, no matter how motivated their students happen to be. Actually it’s worse than that, because there are very few people working in the games industry today (and Raph Koster is definitely one of them) who understand games well enough to even communicate what they know and how they know it.
一个小问题是:很少有老师能够很好地理解游戏，不管他们的学生有多积极。事实上，情况比这更糟糕，因为如今在游戏产业中工作的人(Raph Koster便是其中之一)很少有足够了解游戏的人能够传达他们所知道的内容以及他们是如何知道这些内容的。
The bridges between the game industry and the academics that want to study and teach games are slowly beginning to form. A shared language is developing, allowing both sides to speak about games and helping developers to more easily share their experiences with one another. It is in this language that the students of tomorrow will be taught.
游戏产业和想要研究和教授游戏的学者之间的桥梁正在慢慢形成。一种共享的语言正在开发中，允许双方谈论游戏，并帮助开发者更容易地彼此分享经验。明天的学生就是用这种语言来学习的。
Games (both video and traditional) are tricky to study because they are so multidimensional. There are so many different ways you can approach them. The design and production of games involves aspects of cognitive psychology, computer science, environmental design, and storytelling, just to name a few. To really understand what games are, you need to see them from all these points of view.
游戏很难研究，因为它们是多维度的。有很多不同的方法可以接近它们。游戏的设计和制作涉及认知心理学、计算机科学、环境设计和故事叙述等方面。为了真正理解游戏是什么，你需要从所有这些角度去看待它们。
I always enjoy hearing Raph Koster talk. He’s one of the few people I know in the games industry who seems to investigate new subjects that might be relevant to his work, even if it’s not immediately obvious why. He forages across wide intellectual landscapes and then returns to share what he’s discovered with the rest of us. Not only is he a courageous explorer, he’s a diligent mapmaker as well.
我一直很喜欢听Raph Koster的演讲。他是我在游戏行业中所认识的少数几个似乎在研究与自己的工作相关的新主题的人之一，尽管原因并不明显。他在广阔的学术领域中搜寻，然后回来与我们分享他的发现。他不仅是一位勇敢的探险家，也是一位勤奋的地图绘制者。
In this book Raph does an excellent job of looking at games from a wide variety of perspectives. With the instincts of a designer working in the field, he has filtered out a treasure trove of useful and relevant nuggets from a career’s worth of his own research in a variety of related subjects. He then manages to present what he’s discovered in a friendly, playful way that makes everything feel like it’s falling right into place; it just seems to make perfect sense.
在这本书中，Raph出色地从多种角度看待游戏。凭借设计师在该领域工作的本能，他从自己在各种相关学科的职业研究中筛选出了有用和相关的宝藏。然后，他设法以一种友好、好玩的方式展示他的发现，让一切感觉都在正确的地方;这似乎很有道理。
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