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

Narrative


The Oxford dictionary defines Narrative as follows:

"A spoken or written account of connected events; a story"

See what I meant earlier in this chapter's introduction? It's already outdated! Narrative doesn't have to be necessarily spoken or written...it can be told through images, both still (photography, art) or moving (motion pictures and yes, video games!). There is one common mistake though: the belief that interactivity might change the basic rules of storytelling that have been set through millennia of human history. It doesn't.

The story is the goal, regardless of how it is told. So the rules of a good story never change.

In fact, in this chapter, we will just briefly discuss how a good story is written. It is a huge topic that would need a few books in itself. As usual, I can never recommend enough that you pick up this topic and to study it in depth, if that's what interests you the most. Not all designers are story writers. If you'd like to specialize in this particular...