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Game Design Curriculum

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Re: Game Design Curriculum

#81

Post by andai »

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…

I immediately thought of music software as something I find intrinsically rewarding, but of course it produces music. Then again, games produce let's plays :)

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#82

Post by Danieru »

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 that. Instead all my effort revolves around crafting fake value for otherwise meaningless bits.

Thus games are the peak of software design: people put up with other software to pay for chances to play mine.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#83

Post by NiggaBytes »

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…

>Your electricity company's website can be a slow, bug-ridden heap of PHP 1.0 garbage and you will still use it because it lets you pay their bill and keep your lights on

It was Java 1.4 until about 2017. I shit you not.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#84

Post by juanuys »

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…

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, some of the videos hard to understand and badly captioned, and will be starting a master's in game design in September...)

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#85

Post by Jugurtha »

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…

Can you give a few examples of some products that get this right? Not just in terms of what's commonly referred to as "gamification", and not talking about badges and things that dance around, but a deeper, less obvious, more subtle and refined connection with to that analogy?

I remember I liked a game and I started writing code to play it for me so I could do other things while still having the feeling that an extension of myself was playing.

As a side note, the company had one of the coolest recruiting tactics. I had to examine HTTP responses to be able to send in requests that triggered actions, and they included a call to application in the HTTP response headers "If you're reading this, please apply".

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#86

Post by Danieru »

juanuys wrote: post #84
Danieru wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 occasional GDC presentation. Even then Miyamoto has maybe given a couple hours of publicly accessible teaching material in his entire career.

If you are interested in Rendering that fields has a good number of useful books written. Design itself is more about "theories of games". Everyone has their own theories, mine might be more influenced by Sid Meier than anything.

My experience has been with a couple western designers, but more so stalwart japanese designers. On the Japanese side you'd be surprise how "personal" the design philosophies are. Westerners tend to be more rule driven, and thus if you want a systems driven understanding of design that needs to come from the west.

The training system in Japan is more apprenticeship driven. What the west would call designers first start as planners. Planner being a rather low level job with lots of manual grunt work. Then within a company the senior designers will couch the juniors on the subject of game design.

Thus there indeed does exist tomes on Nintendo's game design: but no one outside Nintendo has ever seen it and no one Ex-Nintendo can talk about it. Just look at how Ojiro (https://twitter.com/moppin_) designer of Downwell went silent after joining Nintendo, then after leaving has remained silent.

Off the top of my head I know for sure Nintendo & Bandai use this "in-company learning" structure. Square Enix being a collection of fiefdoms tends more towards hiring a designer they like then putting them in charge of a team. Hence how you got Tokyo RPG Factory.

Note I'm approaching this with the understanding that a good game only has 1 lead designer. In Japan this is the game's director. It might be that in the west game's have a more group driven approach.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#87

Post by seangp »

Jugurtha wrote: post #85
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…

Can you give a few examples of some products that get this right? Not just in terms of what's commonly referred to as "gamification", and not talking about badges and things that dance around, but a deeper, less obvious, more subtle and refined connection with to that analogy? I remember I liked a game and I started writing code to play it for me so I could do other things while still having the feeling that an exten…

My company was asked to make some health and safety induction software. Visitors to the client company would have to self complete the induction process in the reception area whilst waiting for their host to collect them. Client wanted us to present 38 slides worth of information and have them ‘acknowledge’ each point. Instead of doing this we turned it into a game whereby the user has to explore a simplified 3D version of the building and identify the health and safety risks themselves. Graphics were well designed, it had elements of humour and it worked. Our analytics showed that 94% of people who started interacting with the software completed the entire induction process.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#88

Post by meddlin »

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…

I'm asking because you seem to speak with experience...

Why do we make video games? I've been programming for 10 years, I love games; wanted to make them. But I went into infosec because it felt...justified? Like it's more noble? But that doesn't seem to make sense saying it out loud.

But your points on understanding game design because of that human-software-machine connection, that just feels like it makes sense.

I'm sorry, this question has just been bugging me for over a year now.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#89

Post by grugagag »

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…

How about logic/puzzle games? They train our brains in finding patterns and that built ‘muscle’ can be applied in non gaming areas. They also serve as a springboard into software development for many. I think the danger is overindulging and the gamification of everything, but in small to moderate amounts games could provide some value. Leavig aside computer games, I think playing in general has a very good value in learning.

Re: Game Design Curriculum

#90

Post by ido »

meddlin wrote: post #88
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…

I'm asking because you seem to speak with experience... Why do we make video games? I've been programming for 10 years, I love games; wanted to make them. But I went into infosec because it felt...justified? Like it's more noble? But that doesn't seem to make sense saying it out loud. But your points on understanding game design because of that human-software-machine connection, that just feels like it makes sense. I…

Why do we paint? Sculpt? Write? Film? Play or compose music?

Both art and entertainment are important.

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