Book Image

Practical Game Design - Second Edition

By : Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci
Book Image

Practical Game Design - Second Edition

By: Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci

Overview of this book

If you’re in search of a cutting-edge actionable guide to game design, your quest ends here! Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of game design with expert guidance from veterans with decades of game design experience across a variety of genres and platforms. The second edition of this book remains dedicated to its original goal of helping you master the fundamentals of game design in a practical manner with the addition of some of the latest trends in game design and a whole lot of fresh, real-world examples from games of the current generation. This update brings a new chapter on games as a service, explaining the evolving role of the game designer and diving deeper into the design of games that are meant to be played forever. From conceptualizing a game idea, you’ll gradually move on to devising a design plan and adapting solutions from existing games, exploring the craft of producing original game mechanics, and eliminating anticipated design risks through testing. You’ll then be introduced to level design, interactive storytelling, user experience and accessibility. By the end of this game design book, you’ll have learned how to wrap up a game ahead of its release date, work through the challenges of designing free-to-play games and games as a service, and significantly improve their quality through iteration, playtesting, and polishing.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
12
Chapter 12: Building a Great User Interface and User Experience

Game design roles

Game designers come in all shapes and sizes. We’ve got generalists that work on everything as well as highly specialized craftspeople put in charge of a single area or system. Creative leads, on the other hand, often work on a more conceptual level, maintaining a cohesive vision for a game and shaping it through feedback, with typically little to no hands-on involvement.

There’s no universal distinction, with roles and responsibilities varying between companies and even teams, but game designers can be roughly divided into the following categories:

  • Generalists: These include junior and senior game designers, as well as lead designers and creative directors. A generalist will often take care of (or provide feedback on) all areas of game design not already covered by someone else on the team.
  • Economy designers/monetization specialists: This is a role very likely to be encountered in the mobile games industry, as nearly all products require...