RPG Maker For Teens, by Michael Duggan

This book is an interesting one, and one I would have liked to have read (or would have liked to have existed) when I was a teenager myself.  As someone who grew up playing role playing games, which I do from time to time even now, I would have enjoyed seeing a book like this which encouraged and instructed teenagers on how they could go from playing games to creating them through instructing the reader on how to use a piece of software called RPG Maker.  And as someone who has spent a considerable amount of time (albeit a while ago) working on the plot of a role playing game, I am someone who is definitely the sort of audience this book is aiming at, if a bit older than most of the readers of the book are likely to be.  Even if the writer of this book is looking for some profit when it comes to having buyers of the software, it does appear as if there is a genuine interest on the part of the author in encouraging consumers of games to become creators and thus part of a larger creative community of independent programmers, which is a subtle way of encouraging more people to become programmers.

The more than 300 pages of this book are divided into eight large chapters which are full of pictures which illustrated how the RPG Maker software works and that show the player a short game that demonstrates its features.  The author begins with an introduction and then seeks to define a fantasy role playing game as well as discuss its elements and some cliches to avoid (1).  After that the author looks at how an RPG is made and how one can work as a developer (2).  This leads to a discussion of the importance of game worlds and how they can be built, and what sort of elements of a fantasy world need to be accounted for (3).  Then there is a chapter on creating characters and writing dialogue (4), another on staging battle encounters (5), and then a discussion of quest design which focuses on challenges and immersion (6).  After that the author closes the book with a couple of chapters, one of which is on some final touches including background music and fx, surprises, and lighting and weather conditions (7), and the other of which looks at where one goes one has a completed game, including editing and publishing (8).  The book then ends with a glossary and index.

For those who read this book and who try to program their own video games with RPG Maker–there is apparently a large community of such game designers, although I do not know any of them personally–this book is likely to encourage a great deal of fondness and respect for the work that has to go into creating a good role playing game.  Given that the RPG Maker software itself includes a great deal of appealing artwork that is already included, which generally correspond with the type of Japanimation that is common in Final Fantasy and related games, the effort to promote the creation of more games by independent designers is certainly something that I personally find to be worth encouraging.  I do not know how many young people who play video games are willing to go into the work of creating those games instead of just playing them, but I think it is a very good thing to encourage people to become creators rather than mere consumers, not least because it allows people to understand the process of creating as well as the effort that it takes to make something worthwhile, all of which allows us better to appreciate creativity in general as well as with video games in particular.