Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering [Paperback]

The second thing that bothered me is that the author teases TOO much about the hundreds of other techniques that exist... but that is it. I do understand that there had to be a limit as to how long the book would be and mentioning all the techniques and explaining them in a proper way would take way too much, but still, where am I supposed to learn about the rest? I WANT MORE!

The last issue doesn't really have to do with content as it does with form. And is definitely not a very big issue, as a matter of fact, I only mention it because I thought that, in order to stay as objective as possible, I needed more "bad points".
The thing is there are many typing mistakes. They aren't orthographic mistakes, they definitely look just like typos, but still they hinder a bit the quality of the book.

And that is it, as far as I am concerned, the rest of the book is just good stuff.
For starters I have to praise the great pointers on creating characters. The ideas for both the physical and internal aspects of an NPC and PC opened my eyes to a whole new way of giving life to characters. And the goodness doesn't stop there. You also get techniques for plot, dialogue, relationship between NPCs and PCs, ways to make the game more immersive, pointers on cinematics, etc.
Trust me, even when David Freeman cuts back on the list of techniques available (and if you are like me, you'll also be left craving for more), there are many more than the ones I mentioned, and most of them have subdivisions with great explanations and examples of how to use them or how they have been used.

I am sure you'll also enjoy the foreword by Will Wright (The Sims guy) and the lovely art scattered throughout the book. Another point in favor of Mr. Freeman is the fact that he gives credit where credit is due. There is even a section at the end of the book that mentions every artist, where you can find more about them and comments on most of them.
The last tidbits of ideas are very interesting, very fun to read because they seem like the ramblings most of us write in that old notebook, the scattered ideas that someday might find their way into a book and/or game.

Now I think I've written too much, so I'll wrap this up by saying that if you are interested in game designing/writing, this book is a must for you. You won't regret buying it and if you do... nah, that won't happen if you are interested in games , I'm confident about that =)

If you want to design a game, I recommend just about any other book with the word "game" in the title. You won't learn any of that here.

On the other hand, if you want to know how to hire David Freeman and the Freeman Group, this book is for you.

In general, there are 2 types of "How to" book: 1) "How you" books, which actually try to teach you something; and 2) "How I" books, which explain how the author will do what he does as soon as you hire him to do it.

This is definitely a "How I" book.

Finally, any book that sums up the plot of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as "Two Major Characters Change Places" (capitalized because this is one of the vaunted "1500 Emotioneering Techniques") is not going to teach you anything useful.