ideas for first semester
they need an assignment to play games and blog - we have categories of games - by genre, by hardware platform, by studio, by strongest characteristic, by success. They have to play games from each category and blog about them. Everybody could be doing a different category each week (so the games [...]
we classify games by what makes them differenet from each other - games for kids/games for adults, indoor games/outdoor games, games that need equipment/games that don’t need equipment, games for girls/women and games for boys/men
says we also need to look at what games have in common - what makes them all games - some structural [...]
book full of non-digital exercises for game designers - good to do in class when ya don’t have cmputers or not everyone can program yet
ch1 - Building Blocks
what’s a game - lots of definitions - an activity with rules, a form of play sometimes involving conflict, most games have goals but not all, defined start [...]
I Play Like a Girl by Nancy Berman
women role play all the time in their lives - make believe
been an increse in women playing RPGs - usually female characters are as good to play as male characters - different powers but female characters have powers
“over the last 2 decades much time and more than a [...]
Image via Wikipediagameplay = choices/challenges/consequences players face, one guy says game lay and story are the same so gameplay goals and the emotional goals of the story should be the same (not sure I buy that one yet), challenges linked together, types of challenges usually related to game genre, fans of certain genres expect certain [...]
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starts off with applications - might be time to talk about all the places you could use the skills from the game classes even if ya don’t go into the game industry - need some job listings
then talks about platforms and genres - need to combine thinking about market and platforms and genres [...]
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players ot just teenage boys anymore - lots of new players especially since mid 90s - games on the web are a big reason for that change - look at data from the Entertainment SoftwareAssociation for newest figures
can’t target your games to everyone - gotta find the right part of your market
gotta understand [...]
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
gotta decide why they’re looking at this - the next big thing and why companies fail might be the ticket, might be how to make it different than in first semester where we would just be interested in learning basic content, here more content but applying it too - maybe [...]
Image of Jeannie Novak
gonna use the jeannie novak book - game development essentials
ch1 is history stuff - need a little something for the new students, I found some good extra resources to work in this year but maybe more of the basic info belongs in the intro class and in the analysis class we play [...]
Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences, 2007
heard about it at Future Play in Toronto
going to be useful in the game design classes - starting int he sophomore class for sure - is there anyway to use it in the freshman classes - maybe in the critical analysis - make sketches while you’re coming up with ideas [...]
