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

Traditional narrative models

We can identify two main models to structure a video game narrative, the three-act story and the monomyth (or the hero’s journey). Of course, these are not the only two that exist, but they are the most used and the ones from which other structures have developed. The monomyth, as we’re going to see, is a more specific and elaborate version of the three-act story that doesn’t only cover the story structure but also the characters that live in it.

These two models are a great starting point for understanding the deep relationship between narrative and games. Don’t be scared by the fact that most stories share the same core structure. It’s been this way for hundreds of years, and nonetheless, so many different stories have been told.

There are other ways to tell a story; there’s so much more still to discover and invent. But our advice is always to master the fundamental rules before attempting to change or...