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

Why do some games fail to monetize?

We spend a lot of time highlighting best practices, but it’s equally valuable to learn from failure and inspect some of the most common issues that can cause a game to underperform.

Poor goal setting

Players need to have a clear goal that they’re working toward (for example, I want to build a team of all-star footballers; I want to rescue Optimus Prime; I want to build a city as good as this). If a player cannot understand what they wish to achieve, they will not understand why they should keep playing, what content they wish to acquire, and why they should care about any of the rewards and offers on hand.

Aspirations and long-term goals often shift over time. What starts as the main goal on day 1 is likely to evolve by day 7 and is almost guaranteed to change by day 30. For example, in many competitive multiplayer games, early on, players are driven by the desire to explore, make progress, unlock new content/playstyles, and...