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

Planning design work

In the games industry, it’s usually the project manager who creates and enforces production schedules. To do that, a list of tasks and assets to produce is assembled based on the available design and technical documentation.

These tasks are then paired with estimates that (in the best-case scenario) come from the people who will actually end up doing said tasks. If the project is highly inventive and/or staff members are inexperienced, more senior employees might get involved in helping with the initial scheduling.

Unfortunately, in the words of strategist Helmuth von Moltke, No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. First production schedules are likely to be very, very wrong. In the beginning, things will usually take longer than anticipated, and a lot of unknown problems, changes in direction, and missed tasks will emerge.

Fortunately, as time goes on, your team’s experience with the product grows and your tools are likely to...