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

Playtesting


You're likely to have encountered the term playtesting before, be it in this very book or elsewhere. In short, playtesting is the process in which you expose your game to the members of your target audience in order to uncover issues and design flaws, and gather actionable feedback that can help improve the game.

However, there's more to playtesting than simply having people play your game and tell you what they think. Varying circumstances ask for different methodologies, and knowing how to apply them is essential in obtaining and analyzing results.

We’ll now arm you with practical expertise that should help you decide on:

  • Which parts of the game to test and when?
  • Who should participate?
  • How to run a playtest session?
  • How to gather and analyze feedback?

What to playtest?

Anything that cannot be verified within the confines of your development team is a potential playtesting candidate. A well prepared playtest will be confined to a particular set of questions that your team wants to...