Game Design

be extrapolated to popularity, thenGrand Theft Auto IIIand its sequelGrand Theft Auto: Vice Cityhave each captivated more player ...

living city with other cars and pedestrians all going about their lives in a believable way, the “rampage” mini-games, or the sa ...

quasi-believable (at least in an action movie sense), yet keeps the driving fun and fairly forgiving. Similarly, though the cars ...

Grand Theft Auto III, players are never able to go inside buildings during gameplay, with all interior interaction happening exc ...

Actions and Consequences......................... In many ways,Grand Theft Auto III’s systems-based design centers the game on a ...

and there are plenty of distinctive landmarks for players to use to get their bearings. An innovative and useful HUD map shows p ...

vehicles also contribute to this fictional space, with each station playing into the satiri- cal themes of the game and its biti ...

Chapter 25 Playtesting ....................... Chapter 25 Playtesting......................... “The common denominator, I would ...

Internet. Instead, playtesting is a key time during which you can transform your game from average to excellent, from something ...

give you. This is why picking a random person off the street to test your game can sometimes be ineffective, since you have no p ...

their time tracking down bugs in the code, but they also provide vital feedback about how the game is playing, whether it is too ...

The fourth type of playtesters includes game designers or developers not actually working on your project. These are people whom ...

The first of these inappropriate testers is your boss. A key part of the game designer’s relationship with a playtester is being ...

preferences. They will suggest ways to strengthen the game, instead of ways to simply change it. A sixth group to be wary of is ...

these testers will work with you over the course of the project, they will have a better understanding of the game and why it ha ...

designers to go through these meaningless bugs will waste far more time than it may save. It makes the most sense to bring in th ...

development team and the preliminary testers that may have been brought in. Now that there is a broader range of people playing ...

to see if the changes fix an existing problem or break the game in some major way. A designer may also direct his testers to try ...

balancing a little earlier, before every last element of the game is in place, may be nec- essary to make sure you do not run ou ...

As you are balancing, you must be keenly aware of how the different values you change affect each other. You may change one weap ...