Book Image

Practical Game Design

By : Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci
Book Image

Practical Game Design

By: Adam Kramarzewski, Ennio De Nucci

Overview of this book

If you are looking for an up-to-date and highly applicable guide to game design, then you have come to the right place! Immerse yourself in the fundamentals of game design with this book, written by two highly experienced industry professionals to share their profound insights as well as give valuable advice on creating games across genres and development platforms. Practical Game Design covers the basics of game design one piece at a time. Starting with learning how to conceptualize a game idea and present it to the development team, you will gradually move on to devising a design plan for the whole project and adapting solutions from other games. You will also discover how to produce original game mechanics without relying on existing reference material, and test and eliminate anticipated design risks. You will then design elements that compose the playtime of a game, followed by making game mechanics, content, and interface accessible to all players. You will also find out how to simultaneously ensure that the gameplay mechanics and content are working as intended. As the book reaches its final chapters, you will learn to wrap up a game ahead of its release date, work through the different challenges of designing free-to-play games, and understand how to significantly improve their quality through iteration, polishing and playtesting.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Live operations


The key objectives of any business are to build, retain, and monetize its customer base. This means that releasing a quality product is just the beginning!

You'll need to maintain a level of support for your game as soon as it becomes permanently available to the public. This could be a public beta, Steam early access, or a so-called soft launch (low-key deployment in a few handpicked territories, for example, Australia, Netherlands, Canada, or the Philippines).

The success of any live title depends on the publisher's ability to double down on their investment and maintain a dedicated team to execute on the key aspects of liveops:

  • Content and feature updates: Keeping the game feeling fresh, bug-free, and relevant
  • Balancing improvements: Addressing both dominant and underplayed strategies based on analytics and player sentiment
  • Customer support: Creating and policing your in-game and online community, and sharing customer sentiments, suggestions, and feedback with the game team...