Book Image

Practical Game Design

By : Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci
Book Image

Practical Game Design

By: Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci

Overview of this book

If you are looking for an up-to-date and highly applicable guide to game design, then you have come to the right place! Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of game design with this book, written by two highly experienced industry professionals to share their profound insights as well as give valuable advice on creating games across genres and development platforms. Practical Game Design covers the basics of game design one piece at a time. Starting with learning how to conceptualize a game idea and present it to the development team, you will gradually move on to devising a design plan for the whole project and adapting solutions from other games. You will also discover how to produce original game mechanics without relying on existing reference material, and test and eliminate anticipated design risks. You will then design elements that compose the playtime of a game, followed by making game mechanics, content, and interface accessible to all players. You will also find out how to simultaneously ensure that the gameplay mechanics and content are working as intended. As the book reaches its final chapters, you will learn to wrap up a game ahead of its release date, work through the different challenges of designing free-to-play games, and understand how to significantly improve their quality through iteration, polishing and playtesting.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Diversity


I think it is important to spend a few words about diversity in video games. Historically, video games and the games industry, in general, have a problem with the lack of diversity. With few exceptions, most of the protagonist characters are white males. When they are women, they are too often sexualized (Lara Croft is a great character...but we all remember her physique in the first batch of Tomb Raider games). When they are homosexual, they are stereotyped, like their sexuality has anything to do with defining what they do and how they act. When they are of different ethnicity, it seems they're there like tokens, present just to say 'hey, this game has a non-white Caucasian character!':

The Overwatch heroes: each character comes from a different part of the world and represents a different cultural background.

There are no guidelines or design practices for this. This is just a matter of sensibility and willingness to explore different cultures, characters, and scenarios in video...