Game Design

Interactive entertainment generates more revenue than the music and movie industries combined. With many people building lifelong careers in games, game design is a critical skill set for every development team. In this course, we will learn the fundamental design philosophies, approaches, and skills that game designers use. Students will learn to understand games like a designer. They will utilize industry terms to increase their communication abilities for design ideas and game descriptions. They will analyze what makes a game fun by examining player behavior patterns, emotive states of the player, and how a designer’s choices impact players. Students will learn a brief history of game development to understand why certain standards and expectations exist, how a development team functions in a game studio to construct games, how to test their design ideas through prototyping and playtesting, and how to construct and utilize design documentation used to construct modern games. Finally, students will examine what makes games products and how to monetize them ethically.