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

Building a Great User Interface and User Experience

In this chapter, we’ll introduce you to the basics of user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design – a complex craft that often blends art, animation, graphic design, and visual effects with game design itself.

While most professional teams have a dedicated artist taking care of the UI/UX side of the product, every game designer must learn the principles of designing interfaces and polishing the end user experience.

Even in a large, well-staffed development team, game designers will have to work side by side with the UI/UX specialists to plan and create interfaces and experiences that are informative, empowering, and delightful to interact with. So, without further ado, let’s begin!

We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

  • Understanding UX
  • Designing UIs