Homework: Week 5. This link takes you to the homework assignment due at the beginning of the next class session.
Be sure to study up for the second exam next week (20 points) on the terms, concepts, and principles from the material presented in the Introduction to Game Design unit from Weeks 4 and 5, plus Chapter 3 in the course textbook (Game Development Essentials: An Introduction). Be sure to study the Lesson Review Sheets handed out in class and make sure you've read all the Required Reading material found in each week's assignment links.
About This Week's Lesson:
This lessons advances us from a game's High Concept to include other important descriptive elements, including its Hook (Unique Selling Point) and its One-Sentence Marketing Description, both of which are your friend and help sell your idea to people who need to fund and sell your game. This is all tied up with the art of game conceptualization using "wopen" questions (you have to ask the right questions to get the right answers that will help you develop a game) and then put everything on paper as an Inception Document because written communication is the key to success in the game industry.
Since the entertainment industry (i.e., "show business") is highly marketing-driven, we also look at the game "markets" in The Human Element of Game Design, Part I. A good portion of what game designers do is deal with marketing-related matters and "selling" their ideas internally. You can't start learning that early enough.
Most importantly, you'll learn The First Two Rules of Game Design that will save you and your game time and time again. Once upon a time, we didn't even call them "game designers," but beginning back in the 1970s, the key concepts and devices of game design began to be codified and transmitted to the masses. With these bedrock rules, real game design can begin.
If you want the Review Sheet with all of the lecture notes from this class session, I will email you a link to it. If you're enrolled in this class and are not receiving the class newsletter, click here to send me the email address you want me to use. I will then add you to the class email list and you'll receive it regularly from then on. Each week's class newsletter includes a direct link to the next review sheet plus the password you'll need to open the file.
These links feature the supplemental material that you are responsible for knowing before the first exam (that takes place at the beginning of Week 4). Be sure to click on every link in this section!
Article: Black Clergy Leaders Outraged at Ghettopoly Game Associated Press
This is why you have to consider political correctness when you design games.
Report: Computer Game Purchasing Habits from the IDSA
Article: Casual Versus Core by Ernest Adams
I'm a casual gamer. If that sounds like a damning admission from a professional game designer, think again; there are a lot more casual gamers out there than core gamers, and it behooves us to understand what they want from a game.
These supplemental links are worth pursuing only if you wish to really learn the subject matter of game design in the broadest possible sense. This material will not be directly included in the exams, but if you're serious about being a game designer and delving deeply into the subject of game design art, craft, and science, here's some more lessons from others who have also "been there."
Article: What Gamers Want: Missing Gamers by Andy Robertson
Following Gamasutra's look at Family Gamers and Silver Gamers, we turn to a vital demographic - 'Missing Gamers'. What do adults who are no longer gamers want from today's titles? We find out...
Article: Book Excerpt - 21st Century Game Design: Designing for the Market by Chris Bateman & Richard Boon
In this excerpt from 21st Century Game Design, the authors suggest how to make game design relevant to the business side of the game development process, because the commercial success of a medium clears the way for artistic expression.
Article: Soapbox: Difficulty and the Interstitial Gamer by Michael M. Eilers
The "interstitial gamer" – one who grew up on games but then got a life, or one who gave them up to take on career and child rearing and is now trying to return to the fold. Not quite casual but not quite hardcore, this type of gamer is dealt a cruel hand by today's game market, and many market trends seem set to exclude this type of gamer even as the ranks of this demographic swell.
Article: From Casual to Core: A Statistical Mechanism for Studying Gamer Dedication by Ernest Adams
The blurring of the "game market" and how to discern who is who.
Article: Pedersen's Principles on Game Design and Production
10 Principles from another industry veteran.
Video: Dynamics for Designers: by Will Wright
This hour-long video from the designer of sim-everything is very enriching.
Bibliography: Week 5
These are the games that we played and analyzed in class this week. If you want more information about them or wish to purchase a copy, see the links below:
APPLES TO APPLES
is a perfect party game. The rules are ultra brief, the play is simple, the
interaction hilarious, and the goal very clear. You can definitely take this one
to family reunions and be the life of the party.
LOST WORLDS (Picture Books) This series of fantasy combat books uses a diceless combat system and first-person perspective. It is simple, fast, portable, and there's a lot of different books in the series. Lost Worlds is now published by Flying Buffalo, Inc. (FBI) who are doing a good job keeping this classic game from going out of print.
Where can you get these games?
