Class Game Design III

This Curricular Unit follows up on the Game Design I Curricular Unit in promoting the place of Game Design professionals and the value of Game Design work in in game development teams as well as games literacy. The Curricular Unit is meant to give students the skills and confidence to confidently aim for good outcomes in original game projects with a higher order of complexity.

1, Unit Introduction

• Revision, Game Structural Model;
• Revision, the four-stage Game Design Process.

2, Advanced Iteration and Specification 

• Level Design;
• Puzzle Design, Puzzle Dependency Chart;
• Range of Game Design Documents;
• Playful Prototype.

3, Main Design Specification

• Iterating on a Game Design Document.

4, the Functional Game in the Game Design Process

• Formal Prototyping and Testing for Information Structures;
• Formal Prototyping and Testing for Anatomy of Choice.
   

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., 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.
• 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.