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

Polishing

What does polishing mean?

This is another concept that many developers have tried to nail with a formal definition. As you know by now, we don’t like formal definitions, so be warned that the notion of what polish is might vary from developer to developer, but most importantly from game to game! To polish a game means to raise the standard of its quality.

Why and how would you polish a pair of shoes or a plank of wood?

You don’t change the shoes or the shape of the plank. Polishing a pair of walking boots won’t turn them into a pair of patent leather formal shoes to go with your tuxedo. They are still boots, but they look great now! The goal of polishing is to smoothen the game experience, tweaking its values and refining its details until it feels really great and immediately pleasing on both an aesthetic and gameplay level.

The (in)famous scenario where the game designer finally does the full playthrough of their game and comes up with a...