Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank my wife, Gloriana, and my parents, Dan and Jan Hiwiller, for always tolerating me and encouraging me. Although the former would have been enough, the latter is greatly appreciated.

I would like to thank everyone who provided comments and support on early drafts. Many helped, but Mark Diehr, Matthew Gallant, and Scott Brodie did a yeoman’s job on a short turnaround, even though they have extremely busy professional careers.

Everything that looks professional within is thanks to the wonderful team at Pearson, including Robyn Thomas, Scout Festa, Laura Norman, Rebecca Winter, and Tracey Croom.

I would like to use this space to thank Jesse Schell for convincing me game design could yield a career and be intellectually interesting. I’d like to thank Jon Dean, James Hawkins, and Jason Barnes for being early examples to me of what leadership looks like among game industry professionals. I would also like to thank all my friends and colleagues at Project Horseshoe, the best community of game designers in the world.

Finally, I cannot forget the dedicated staff and faculty of the Game Design program at Full Sail University who have helped me refine my approach to communicating the practice of game design, including, but not limited to, Ricardo Aguilo, Dax Gazaway, D’Juan Irvin, Christina Kadinger, Michael Lucas, Kingsley Montgomery, Andrew O’Connor, Mark Pursell, Brian Stabile, and Lee Wood.