Sandy's Soapbox
This course teaches how to design a standalone game that is balanced, playable and has that intangible of 'fun'. Topics include game genres and history, game balance using matrix and stage diagrams, resources balancing, map or board design, statistics and randomization, player interaction, designing for the 4 types of player, and adding theme and gloss elements. We also cover the milestones needed to produce a game. Each student will take their concept from idea to creating their choice of a tabletop game or a paper prototype for a future computer game.
The school I professor at is an engineering and business small non-profit college, with many students-- especially computer engineering and computer science majors-- interested in working in the game industry. My personal motivation is to ensure that they go out to make awesome games with a deep understanding of what makes a game awesome.
Now, real game designers don't wait to learn to be game designers. Just like 'writers write', game designers design games. It's in our nature. We're the ones making house rules for Monopoly at age 7, coming up with better ways to play the card game our crazy uncle taught us, and writing computer games as our way of learning programming. This course isn't to make people want to become game designers. It's for those who can benefit from the background and wealth of past work that will make them clueful game designers.
Over this semester, I and a colleague will be drafting up the course, to run in the Fall. Our first decision is the combined mix of "what is the course about" and "what textbooks are relevant".
In my draft pitch, I put the core textbook as 'Game Architecture and Design' (Rollings & Morris) because it's about how to engineer a game, particularly a computer game. 'GA&D' is a favorite of mine, and is the book I hand out when a student or relative wants to self-learn computer game design.
However, much of the course is focused on teaching what makes for good gameplay and what the wide variety of games there are. GA&D is more about implementation.
Raph Koster's "A Theory of Fun" (TheoryOfFun.com) might be, I think, a better primary textbook.
Further, Jesse Schell's "The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses" is a good 2nd reference. It's (I think) idiosyncratic, clearly one skilled person's informed view rather than a traditional academic text. (There are some sample Lenses up at Jesse's art of game design site)
My current thinking is to go with Koster as a core text and use the free Lenses as a supplement. We would then work in material from GA&D in creating the lectures but have it as an optional supplemental book, rather than the core text.
I think this fits better with the Humanities focus of the course (GA&D being more appropriate if it's a CS course).
I also expect we'll delve deep into Gamasutra reference articles, as well as some from BoardGameGeek and RPGnet. For example, we'll need to cover both the possible board game mechanics ( list of game mechanics) as well as genres list of genres).
Also, we must cover core game theory concepts like Zero Sum, Equilibriums, Symmetry/Asymmetry, classic examples like Prisoner's Dilemma, etc.
So that gives at least 7 topics to cover in the course:
- History of games
- Form game theory
- Types of mechanics
- Genres
- Designing a game
- Fun
- Lenses
Given that 'game designers design games', one core bit I want is that, at least once/week, the students will actually have to quickly design a game based on that week's material and with strong design restriction (akin to the "make a maze in 1 minute that takes me more than 1 minute to solve" exercise from Inception, or exercises like 'design a chess variant in 5 minutes using these chess sets'). Then they can present their protogame to the rest of the class.
I want them to not just make lots of games, but also learn that not all game ideas are good -- and that's okay! Especially, that great games are made, not born, and do not spring out fully formed but go through revision and discussion to become great games.
RPGnet was created as 'the inside scoop on gaming' and among the first to provide direct connection between game creators and game players. Now, we're going meta, providing an inside scoop on creating a course to teach people how to be game creators. Each month I'll report on issues and problems we've hit in creating the ultimate game course.
Are you interested in helping create the next generation of game designers? Feel free to provide your thoughts and ideas in the comments forum. And may good design be ever on your side.
Until next month,
Sandy at rpg.net
