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

Introduction to season passes

A season pass (also known as a battle pass) is a feature introduced by Valve’s Dota 2 back in 2013. Since then, it has become a mainstay in a majority of free-to-play games and even premium multiplayer titles that rely on live operations to sustain player interest. The feature, in its many incarnations, can be found in any genre imaginable, from match-3 puzzle games to competitive online shooters.

Overwatch 2 features a classic, challenge-driven battle pass with a row of linear reward tiers:

Figure 14.6 – Overwatch 2 battle pass

Figure 14.6 – Overwatch 2 battle pass

I am sure you have encountered it before, but essentially, a season pass could be classified as a large-scale, in-game event that is built into the core gameplay loop, where players are usually presented with one to three (but typically two) reward tracks that function similarly to a totalizer discussed previously. Players have a set amount of time (this could be weeks or months) to...