Basics of game design: goals, obstacles, decisions, rules, and interactions. Player-focused design and subjective types of fun.

A brief history of gaming from early folk games to today’s giant game corporations. An overview of popular game genres will also be presented.

Play a simple game multiple times, changing the goal each time. How does the emotional feel of the game change as the goal changes?

Students will present their final project ideas to the class. After the presentations, we will discuss a basic framework for writing game rules.

Customize a standard deck of cards with special rules for each suit. Challenge other players to duels and see whose deck wins. After each duel, discuss the balance with your opponent. Strengthen suits that were too weak and weaken suits that were too strong. Find a new opponent and repeat the process until every deck feels comparably balanced.

Overview of computer games, from early ASCII text games to the latest generation of consoles. We will also examine the different genres of computer games.

Make a “par 5” obstacle course using pieces found in Tabletop Simulator. All the students will play each other’s courses. Keep score to find out if the average player can make it to the goal in five attempts.

Students will present their final projects to the class.

We will playtest the games and provide feedback and critiques to the designer.

While some card and board games can be designed and created by one author, many games (especially digital games) require a large team. This class will discuss writing a design document to keep large projects organized.

You will be given a random design problem involving a budget, staff, deadline, creative vision, and technology platform. Working in a small team quickly design the game's structure and make a paper prototype of one of its systems.

Play balance theory and practical techniques used to balance games.

Design a game where players must work together to stop a rampaging robot from destroying a nearby town. Design the AI for the robot and then try to beat your own creation.

Mid-Semester break.

Thorough game design requires an understanding and analysis of the odds and probabilities in the game. In this class we will cover simple statistical formulas that can be used to analyze a game.

Using a simple dice-rolling game as a framework, design and tune the systems of a sci-fi spaceship. Create odds tables based on the different events that might occur. Battle other players’ spaceships and record the results. How does the reality correspond to the calculated odds?

Solve all the problems on the probability worksheet.

Why are we compelled to keep playing certain games when our bodies are telling us to eat or sleep? We will look at some basic behavioral psychology studies and apply the results to game design. We will also examine many different types of games and try to understand why some can be played repeatedly, while others are played once then shelved.

Design a Vegas casino game. Try to entice players to your table and keep them there. Be careful about giving away too much money or your casino will go broke. But if you give away too little then your players will leave to visit another table.

Update the rules for your final project and make sure your game is ready for others to play. Bring the rules and the game in next week.

Presentations of the students’ final projects.

Play and critique the final project games. The game designer will not be allowed to settle rules disputes and questions. Instead, the players must rely completely on the rulebook.

While a game can be abstract, adding a theme can help draw players into your game world. This week’s lecture will examine how the “flavor” of a game can enhance the game player’s experience.

Design a character that could appear in a low-budget zombie movie. Create a set of options that describe how that character would move and attack if trapped in a room filled with zombies. Make sure that all the options are thematically appropriate. For instance, a Sheriff would be expected to carry a gun, but a Priest would not.

Work on your final project. Focus on elements that will add atmosphere to your game such as colors, fonts, characters and story.

Spring Carnival

We will talk about general design principles for designing a level. Many of these techniques can be applied to both board games and digital games.

Pick a favorite video game and create a simulation of it using only blank index cards, tokens and dice. You will lose the graphics, the sound effects and input controllers. What are the core elements of the game that survive the conversion from electronics to paper?

Pick a recent movie or television show that you have watched. On paper, design a video game level that represents some aspect of the story. Exact measurements and details are not required; instead, focus on the high-level relationships between the areas. How will the player’s journey through your level create a story? How much of that story is told by your level, and how much is created by the player’s actions?

Why do gamers play the games they do? How can a particular game be loved by a certain group of players, but hated by another? Over the past two decades researchers have proposed several models of player behavior that analyze the motivations of individuals within a game world. We will take a look at several of these taxonomies in order to help us design games best suited for our intended audience.

This is the last chance to playtest your final project game. Work on formalizing the rules, enhancing the player interface, and tuning the system mechanics.

Polish your game and rulebook. Write an analysis of your game that includes the history of the changes you made and why you made them. Include playtest data and other statistical information. How does your game rate in the categories of set up, goals, obstacles, decisions, rules and interaction? How is the balance both from a player-to-player perspective and gameplay-to-gameplay perspective?

Presentations of the students’ final projects.

We will play the final projects. Projects will be graded offsite over the weekend and final grades will be emailed to the students.

Grading is based on a percentage scale from 0 – 100%. Attendance is worth 65%, homework counts as 10%, and the final project is worth 25%.
90 – 100%:      A
80 – 89%:        B
70 – 79%:        C
60 – 69%:        D
0 – 59%:          Failure

Since this is a workshop class, grading will primarily be based on attendance and class participation. 65% of a student’s grade will be determined by attendance; the first 13 classes are each worth 5% of your grade.

There will be one homework assignment each week. Use Google Docs for all written reports. A link to the document must be emailed (or sent through Slack) to me before the start of the next week’s class. Make sure the document permissions are set to allow comments in order for me to give feedback.

The final project is a complete game that can be played from beginning to end in approximately 20 minutes. Each student must work on their own individual project. The final project is worth 25% of your grade and is broken down as follows:
5%:      Rulebook (ease of use, organization, clearly written)
5%:      Graphic Design (clarity, layout, colors, interface, etc.)
5%:      Analysis (lessons learned, playtest notes, statistics, etc.)
10%:    “Fun” factor (replay value, theme, originality, etc.)