Class Game Design III

This course unit builds on the Game Design II course unit by highlighting the role of the game design professional and the value of game design work within game development teams. In contrast to the Game Design I and Game Design II course units, this course focuses on a higher degree of specificity in practices and in cross-disciplinary project work with other courses in the same semester and curricular year. This allows students to deepen their understanding of practices and techniques to a professional level in terms of process, teamwork, refinement, and integration with other disciplines in game development where Game Design I and Game Design II focus on more general, foundational skills.

Not applicable

Game Design for a Multidisciplinary Project Introduction to Researching Game Genres; Defining Content of a Game Genre; Informational Design in a Game Genre; Defining Specification Techniques for a Game Genre; Defining Design Principles of a Game Genre. Shifting Priorities in Formal Testing Four-Stage Game Design Process; GDD (Game Design Document). Functional Game Stage 2 of the Game Design Process; Formal Testing for a Functional Game; Anatomy of Choice for Formal Testing in Stage 2; Formulating a Hypothesis for Formal Testing; Information Structures for Formal Testing in Stage 2.

The unit is strongly oriented towards problem- and project-based learning. The project in the Game Development II unit provides game design problems for the shorter-term assignments in the Game Design III unit. All assignments in the Game Design III unit consist in finding, contextualizing, and solving design problems in that development project in an experimental and iterative fashion. Students learn experimentally and with real design problems. Both of the larger assignments in the Game Design III unit consist of groups of students selecting from the solutions they each individually developed in the short-term assignments and generating integrated and improved hand-ins. This is meant to reinforce student habits of working iteratively and experimenting within a coherent design vision, where these habits are essential for any development work connected to game design.

Adams, E. (2009). Fundamentals of Game Design (2 ed.). Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Fullerton, T. (2014). Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. CRC press. Lemarchand, R. (2021). A Playful Production Process: For Game Designers (and Everyone). MIT Press. Macklin, C., & Sharp, J. (2016). Games, Design and Play: A detailed approach to iterative game design. Addison-Wesley Professional. Salen, K., Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT Press.