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Game Design Curriculum

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Re: Game Design Curriculum

#101

Post by abdulmuhaimin »

purple-again wrote: post #62
prerok wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the history is a bit different. LoL was created as a clone from Dota (Defense of the Ancients) mod for Warcraft 3. So, DOTA 2 is a continuation of that story and Blizzard basically recreated the mod into a standalone game and called it DOTA 2. I do agree with the sentiment though. The community is definitively not n00b friendly and I gave up soon as well :S

Blizzard did not do that. Valve (the company behind Steam) did that. Much salt was sown around the Blizzard offices during the lawsuits that followed. Valve won. Blizzard went on to release a remake of the game that spawned DOTA which was universally reviled, a large part of which was due to them killing incentives to build custom maps with their new IP rules designed to avoid another DOTA incident. Armchair analysis…

In case people are wondering, hes talking about Warcraft 3 Reforged, which is a remake of Warcraft 3. A real disaster of a release, I couldnt imagine anyone could have f* up such a beloved game worse than Blizzard could.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#102

Post by productionx »

munificent wrote: post #61
meheleventyone wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take serious issue with the description of games as useless. They don’t do anything in the same way as reading a book doesn’t do anything. Or playing chess doesn’t do anything. You absolutely get something tangible in return. Whether it’s a new perspective, new friends or utter humiliation. The idea we should capture the way games build tangible experiences and apply them to “useful software” is to misunderstand bo…

> I take serious issue with the description of games as useless. I figured some might. Try to charitably understand why I chose to emphasize with that word. Yes, obviously, playing games provides all sorts of meaningful things to the player. As I said, playing games is intrinsically rewarding. But what most games don't do is provide extrinsic utility . Playing a videogame does not pay your mortgage, fix your leaky si…

`Playing a videogame does not pay your` you clearly have not seen e-whores

`Your electricity company's website can be a slow, bug-ridden heap of PHP 1.0 garbage` no it cannot.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#103

Post by yesbutt11 »

Danieru wrote: post #82
munificent wrote: post #43

Game design (whether computer or even board games) is a valuable topic to learn even if you never make a real game. If you make any kind of thing that people use, learning a little about how to think like a game designer can help you make things that are more rewarding and pleasant to use. One way to think of videogames is that they are useless software . Imagine a word processor that couldn't save or print files. Or…

Incredible how many posters are missing your point! As a gamedev I 100% agree with your assertion that games are useless. An expression I use in game design is "fictional friction". Nothing in my game is real. None of the struggle is essential. Every mouse click or decision was a fiction I designed for players. Nothing prevents me from giving players infitnite money, in fact there is a dev cheat menu which does just…

So games have a use as a forcing function on our agency that can be gamed.

Which means they’re not useless.

Trying to be concrete and objective about things that are entirely subjective cognitive ideas gets a little old.

I like creative mode games. They’re sensory fun, which is on the list.

Really, I think you and OP miss the point of games.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#104

Post by runawaybottle »

The problem I have with courses like this is it validates careers that lack integrity.

Game design 101 starts with learning to program or do graphics.

The same with software development. Unfortunately, we as an industry validated an entire class of people with jobs where they literally manage software (agile people) without building actual software for years.

It doesn’t sit well with me, but life is not fair.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#105

Post by yesbutt11 »

munificent wrote: post #43

Game design (whether computer or even board games) is a valuable topic to learn even if you never make a real game. If you make any kind of thing that people use, learning a little about how to think like a game designer can help you make things that are more rewarding and pleasant to use. One way to think of videogames is that they are useless software . Imagine a word processor that couldn't save or print files. Or…

You call out that they’re valuable learning tools and call them useless software.

I have a hard time accepting entirely cognitive items, even word processors are entirely cognitive objects, being seen as useless, full stop.

This smacks of a kind of cognitive functional fixedness. A thing without commonly accepted type of utility is valueless. Our minds must remain fixed on the concrete functionality.

Word processors are used to generate a lot of useless content too. Not every invention of high utility is limited to the cognitive use in that realm of utility.

Same with things commonly perceived to be of little utility.

In fact the willingness to spend money on them appears to be of immense utility.

The value of objects need not be left up to popular opinion.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#106

Post by krapp »

runawaybottle wrote: post #104

The problem I have with courses like this is it validates careers that lack integrity. Game design 101 starts with learning to program or do graphics. The same with software development. Unfortunately, we as an industry validated an entire class of people with jobs where they literally manage software (agile people) without building actual software for years. It doesn’t sit well with me, but life is not fair.

>Game design 101 starts with learning to program or do graphics.

No it doesn't, any more than architecture 101 starts with bricklaying, or novel writing 101 starts with learning typesetting and printing.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#107

Post by sukilot »

tebruno99 wrote: post #13
ev1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are downvoting you, but this is actually a ridiculously common thing in games. The entire game industry is pretty bad in general compared to tech or otherwise: one huge concept is that you have to "love the game"; you're willing to take low pay, low benefits, deal with overrun unpaid overtime hours, etc. because you "love the game". Most game companies freely tell you about how disposable you are because they…

In 2011 I interviewed for a Mobile position at Riot to make an accessory app for players. I was literally hazed like old school college hazings. At the end they asked me when I wanted to start. I told the lead dev to get lost and he begged me to "not be like that" but said if I was going to "be like that" then I wasn't a good fit anyway. It is still to this day one of the worst experiences I've encountered.

You had to put underwear on your head and drink alcohol until you got sick?

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#108

Post by juanuys »

Danieru wrote: post #86
juanuys wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we have the gamedevs here, and we're talking about game design, I would very much love and appreciate if you could upload a picture of your bookshelf and share it here. I'm almost done with the Coursera CalArts game design specialisation, and they have cited a few resources, but I want to know what the industry recommend amongst themselves. (That said, I've found the peer assessments on Coursera utterly lacking…

That's a fun question. Personally we do not have more than a couple dozen books in total at our house. This is more the product of my generation plus living in Japan where no one can afford the dead space for a book shelf. For the subject matter I would say your best set of resources is GDC presentations. Our industry's great minds never write books, or even web articles for that matter. Best they give are the occasi…

Thank you for highlighting the West's rules/systems-driven approach vs the mentoring approach in Japan.

I an indeed infinitely curious about the personal design philosophies of all the secretive greats. I guess there's something special inside all of us (game designers), and we just need to find it and nurture it. Books are good for starters, and up to a point.

PS good luck with Railgrade!

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#109

Post by scollet »

Danieru wrote: post #82
munificent wrote: post #43

Game design (whether computer or even board games) is a valuable topic to learn even if you never make a real game. If you make any kind of thing that people use, learning a little about how to think like a game designer can help you make things that are more rewarding and pleasant to use. One way to think of videogames is that they are useless software . Imagine a word processor that couldn't save or print files. Or…

Incredible how many posters are missing your point! As a gamedev I 100% agree with your assertion that games are useless. An expression I use in game design is "fictional friction". Nothing in my game is real. None of the struggle is essential. Every mouse click or decision was a fiction I designed for players. Nothing prevents me from giving players infitnite money, in fact there is a dev cheat menu which does just…

Am I missing these wieldings of "useless"? Aren't there intangible experiences like morality, logic, therapy, etc.?

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#110

Post by scollet »

drops wrote: post #97
roudaki wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No game is David's Michelangelo in talent or effect. When people say we need entertainment they are thinking in a sense of dessert like of course you deserve a dessert sometimes. But that is not how we got 67% obesity rates. And now with companies aggressively stealing attention and average person spending 5 hours a day on entertainment while reading one book a year you do feel little guilty for creating one more app…

> No game is David's Michelangelo in talent or effect. Yet. How long has sculpting been an art form and how long has it taken for Michelangelo to surface? How long have video games been an art form?

Also games think on more dimensions. I get sculpting, painting, performance, literature... and just enough magic to make it fresh. Only certain vectors can be described by other mediums and often not combinatorialy.
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