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

Chapter 3. Scoping a Game Project

In this chapter, we'll teach you the concepts and relationships between a game's overall scope, its structure, and its content. We'll explore real-world examples and help you build an understanding of how to better document the size, complexity, and dependencies in your game, as well as to help you estimate your tasks.

The game's scope is a term used to define the project's perceived size and complexity. Without knowing the scope in advance, any production scheduling, costing, and staffing would be nigh on impossible. The scope is usually well defined by the time you wrap up the first version of the game design document.

As a game designer working on establishing the initial scope, it's your responsibility to list all of the game's features, functionalities, and systems, as well as to approximate the entirety of the game's content. This includes the quantity and complexity of gameplay mechanics, playable levels, missions, cutscenes, storylines and dialog,...