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

Combat systems

One of the major epitomes of the conflict metaphor is combat. There are countless arguments against violence and the depiction of fights and wars in video games, and indeed, because there is so much more to video games other than battles, fights, and violence, those arguments are often just empty words. It would be like condemning cinema because there are movies about war.

The reality about combat in video games (and all kinds of games really) is that fighting is part of our nature. And while our society and culture have made it possible for us to avoid fights in our real lives, many people will always be fascinated by some of the characteristic elements of combat.

Of course, many others won’t. Not all games need to include combat, fights, or violence at all, and there are millions of players not interested in playing games that involve any kind of violence.

So, why is combat still so popular?

First of all, combat means competition, one of the most...