706.402 Game Design and Development

Week 0

Slides

• Week 0: Welcome, Course Introduction, Course Format

Readings

• Gamasutra article on “What Makes a Game?”
• “The Making of Prince of Persia”

Videos

• Jane McGonigal: The game that can give you 10 extra years of life
• Extra Credits: So You Want to be a Game Designer
• GDD Talk by Jordan Mechner “Making of Prince of Persia”

Week 1

Slides

• Week 1: What makes a Game, Game Design Elements

Readings

• DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS, Bartle
• MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research, Hunicke, LeBlanc, Zubek

  Bartle Test

Videos

• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow, the secret to happiness

Week 2

Slides

• Week 2: Game Design Process & Prototyping

Readings

• Eric Zimmerman: Play as Research: The Iterative Design Process
• Post-GDC: Cliff Bleszinski Says Iteration Won Gears of War
• GTA Design Document
• Postmortem: Blizzard’s Diablo II
• Creating A Great Design Document

Videos

• Dynamics: The State of the Art by Clint Hocking (Far Cry 2, Splinter Cell)
• Everything I Learned About Level Design I Learned from Disneyland by Scott Rogers (Author of Level up!)

Week 3

Slides

• Week 3: PM and Game Engines

Resources

• Unity Manual
• Game Dev Resources
• Postmortem: Blizzard’s Diablo II

Videos

• Unreal Engine 4 – Demo from GDC 2013

Week 4

Week 4: Graphics and Art in Game Development

Project Schedule

Send slides

03/03/2015 to jpirekr@iicm.edu

Final Student Presentations

10/03/2015 17:00 HSi12