Class Game Design & Prototyping

The unit is meant to achieve a baseline of game design domain knowledge and skills across the learner cohort, given the diverse range of learner backgrounds. Students with limited previous experience in games creation can use this unit to gain core skills in game design's distinctive form of creativity, game analysis, and iterative practices. Students with more experience in game creation can use this unit to consolidate their skills and be challenged in changing their practices to be more consistent and better able to explore games.

The unit provides an introduction to games as objects and activities in a game studies perspective and deals with game design as an aspect of games and as a process. In this role, the unit frames learning in all other units in the study cycle. At the same time, learning in this unit is complemented by the Seminars I unit.

1, Key Concepts and Practices

• Unit Introduction;
• Creativity in Games;
• Exploratory Prototyping;
• Informal Testing;
• Analog Games;
• Publishing.

2, Game Studies

• Definition of Game, Design, and Game Design;
• Dynamic Analog Dilemmas.

3, Formal Prototyping and Testing

• Model for the Game Design Process;
• Introduction to Stage 1 of the Game Design Process (Proof of Concept);
• Falsifiability (prototype as a proposition);
• Focusing the Prototype;
• Test Hypothesis;
• Formal Testing Technique;
• Information Structures;
• Anatomy of Choice.

The unit is highly-oriented towards project-based and experimental learning. It is particularly relevant that lecturers play the part of producers in students' creative processes, by monitoring these processes, suggesting alternatives and options for project directions, encouraging students to define a concrete project vision through iteration, experimental creativity, and planning, and by requiring design and production milestones (to be compiled by each student project group as part of the final semester project hand-in).

• FULLERTON, T., SWAIN, C., HOFFMAN S. S. (2008). Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games, 2nd Ed. Amsterdam; Boston; Heidelberg; London; New York: Elsevier: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008.
• ISAAC, E. (2022). Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms. Routledge.
• 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.
• SCHELL, J. (2008), The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. Morgan Kaufman.