The topics of the week and the in-class exercises are designed to give you a broad theoretical, analytical and conceptual understanding of game design. Our goal is to understand what makes a game and then go about creating games. As a game designer, students need to provide information to players about the content of their game, about how to play it (the things they need to do to progress in the game and the rules), and about the winning conditions. Students need to motivate people to play their games in the first place. Players need to feel empowered by the choices offered by their game and designing a game is essentially about designing meaningful and interesting choices for players. You are expected to create smaller games throughout the course. Students need to understand what are the differences between game programming and game design.

The first component of this course is game analysis. The students will choose a game and will prepare their analysis. They will hold a 5 minutes presentation using topics and keywords covered in readings. The second component of this course and the centerpiece will be to design games that the students will create and develop over the 18 weeks of this course using an iterative process. The third component will be playtesting. Playtesting is necessary to serve as a wakeup call and force students to solve the problems they have in their game and is part of the iterative process. Students will present a report. The next component will be a Game Design Document (GDD). The purpose of the GDD is to implement the same theories and practices discussed in class. The students will select a topic and will start working with a structure. The GDD will then describe the overall vision of the game. At the end of the course, the students will prepare and they will hold a public presentation. In the public presentation, they will have the opportunity to discuss their game and developing their own understanding of the topics covered in lectures and readings. The final component of this course is their final pitch. As the course progresses, the students will also begin to work in their pitch. They have to convince that their game is worth the risk.