Ian Schreiber’s Game Design Concepts Course
I really should have mentioned this earlier, as it’s both something I find incredibly interesting and feel deserves all the support it’s possible to give. Ian Schreiber, game designer, teacher, and co-author of Challenges For Game Designers with Brenda Brathwaite (you can find his blog on teach game design here and while you’re at it, check out Brenda’s always-interesting site Applied Game Design), is giving an online class on game design concepts - called, handily, Game Design Concepts - that starts in June and runs over the summer. The course description sums it up better than I can, and sounds all nice and official too:
This course provides students with a theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design, along with practical exposure to the process of creating a game. Topics covered include iteration, rapid prototyping, mechanics, dynamics, flow theory, the nature of fun, game balance, and user interface design. Primary focus is on non-digital games.
The bit at the end there about non-digital games is particularly interesting, as I have almost no experience in terms of analog game design and have always considered it a huge hole in my toolset, one I’m lookingforward to filling in. Perhaps even more exciting, though, is the program’s price - The whole thing is free, other than the required text (aforementioned Challenges For Game Designers, which even outside of Amazon is half the price of your typical book on game design) and any supplies needed for the game you’ll create during the course. I picked up Challenges For Game Designers back when it first came out, and after reading through a good chunk of it, I think anybody participating will be in very good hands. All the information on the course can be found at the Game Design Concepts site, including where to to send an email if you’re interested in registering.
I think this is an absolutely great idea, and one I’d love to see more of. There are all kinds of events, conferences, festivals, and so on happening year-round with a focus on various aspects of the games industry and the academia built up around it, but many of them are just too cost prohibitive in terms of time and money to be doable for someone like, say, me. I’ve never attended the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco becaust I can’t afford the thousands of dollars involved in going an no company has ever offered to pay for me to go. Next week sees the five-day Games For Change Festival happening at Parson’s New School here in Manhattan, including the likes of Henry Jenkins, Ian Bogost, Brenda Brathwaite’s incredible game Train, and more, but with the bulk of it happening during my work week and passes running several hundred dollars, there’s no way I can make it. There are some cheap or free events concerning games that are more compatible with my work schedule - the IGDA hosts regular meet ups and demo nights, and recently NYU’s Game Center opened up lectures featuring Warren Spector, Mark Leblanc, and Eric Zimmerman to the public, which was greatly appreciated. I attend as many of these things as I can, but it doesn’t do much to take away from the feeling that I’m regularly missing out on things I could really benefit from as a designer. At my more bitter moments, it’s hard not to look at things like GDC and other big, expensive events as a private club I won’t be able to buy my way in to any time soon.
So before the course even starts, I’m already tremendously grateful to Ian Schreiber for taking the time and effort to offer this sort of thing free of charge to any and all who are interested. I didn’t go to college for game design (or anything else, actually); I kind of stumbled-ass backwards in to the thing, discovered I had an affinity for it, and almost immediately never wanted to do anything else with my life but make up things for people to play. I’ve spent a lot of time amassing a library of books, lectures, blog posts, articles, and anything else I could find on game design to temper my own experiences with, and am constantly looking out for anything that might teach me something new and make me a better designer. As such, to have someone who’s approach to design I already appreciate and admire offer a college-level that won’t plunge me in to debt and adapts to my schedule is something of a dream come true, and I can’t wait to get started.
Originally published at Expertologist. Please leave any comments there.