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

What is a game mechanic?

I know, this is a book about practical game design, but when it comes to game mechanics and the core elements of gameplay, we have to go through some theory.

Formally defining anything is a difficult task; I always prefer to quote definitions from different authors. All of them are equally correct and the different points of view complement each other. It is not our goal with this book to give a comprehensive definition; what’s important is that a clear idea can stick in your designer mind by reading them!

“Mechanics are the various actions, behaviors, and control mechanisms afforded to the player within a game context.”

– MDA: Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics Framework, by Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Zubek

“Game mechanics are rule-based systems/simulations that facilitate and encourage a user to explore and learn the properties of their possibility space through the use of feedback mechanisms.”

– A Theory...