VA 306 – Intro to Game Design (Spring 2009)

VA306 – Intro to Game Design will be offered again in Spring 2010. The class meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:40 – 4:20 PM in COB 209, the main computer lab. We will be working with rapid prototyping to create and revise multiple board games, allowing experimentation and immediate feedback into game designs. You can view past work by accessing student blogs on the sidebar.

If you would like to order your books for the course early, we will be using one textbook, Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber (ISBN-158450580X). The book runs about $14 through Amazon. Other course readings will be available as PDFs or handouts.

I’d like to thank everyone in the class for a really great semester! You produced a lot of great games in the class and I hope everyone had a great time. I hope some of you will continue your game design efforts over the summer. You are welcome to keep me updated!

If you are looking for additional reading over the summer, I have to recommend this article on Subtractive Design by David Sirlin in the March 2009 issue of Game Developer Magazine. It applies the concept of subtractive design used in every other design field to videogames, using examples from Team Fortress 2, Portal, Ico, and Braid. It’s a great read. Game Developer is a great resource, so I’m glad the library has it available digitally.

Have a great summer!

This is just a reminder: your blogs are due on Wednesday at midnight, so you will have the evening after finals to finish up. After that, I’m filling in the grades, so anything you get done after will be late work and not accepted.

Again, finals are THIS Wednesday, May 13 from 1:40 – 4:20 (same time as the class normally meets). Bring your portfolios and your business card.

An artist has ‘demade’ Shadow of the Colossus for the TRS (Trash) 80 Model III computer. You can download the game (FREE! – emulator required). The parallax scrolling background and simplicity of the forms creates an excellent aesthetic that is more reminiscent of Ico than SotC…

Watch the video here.

This is the last weekend we have before finals. Finals will be on Wednesday May 13 from 1:40 – 4:20 (regular class hours). Remember, this means that Monday is the final day for testing!

To prepare for finals, read this article on building a portfolio for game design. This will help you choose which games you want to include in your portfolio.

Your portfolio will include:

• Your three best games.
• A business card with a link to your blog or homepage.

Bring in your portfolio for Wednesday. I will grade you by recording the games you have included in your portfolio and your business card.

Check the list of graded elements for class to make sure you are up to date.

IT’S FINALLY HERE!!! Daniel Benmergui’s latest game, Today I Die, is finally here! It’s his next game after I Wish I Were the Moon. Check it out NOW!

If you have created some games in this class you would like to share, there are a few places you can submit them to. Remember that disseminating your work will help build your portfolio and recognition as a designer!

Board Game Designers Forum – The number 1 venue for board games on the web. There are designers from all over the world sending games here, so it’s a perfect place to share your best work and get some feedback!

Game Career Guide – You can create a blog (or perhaps link to your design blog from here?) and share your games with other students.

Values at Play Archive – You can submit your socially conscious games to VAP – currently they only have a collection of digital games, but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t accept board games as well! Let me know if you’re interested!

Japan Prize – This is a contest for audiovisual media produced with specific educational purposes. You can submit digital games, videos, websites, etc. (sorry – no board games!) Deadline is July 31.

Some of you have done some great marathon design sessions. I encourage you to record your experiences from these sessions as they will be invaluable when reflecting on the way you design and learning how to improve your work. You can even submit this material to Game Career Guide to get your experiences out there and recognized!

Here is an excellent article by Jay Barnson of Rampant Games (Twisted Metal, Warhawk) who took the challenge of building an RPG in Python in a 40 hour marathon (equal to one work week). The journal is very informative and the 10 lessons he learned are great advice.

How to Build a Game in One Week from Scratch with No Budget

Here is a collection of “art games” mentioned in the Ian Bogost article. We should look at these in addition to Jason Rohrer’s work, Passage and Gravitation:

• Daniel Benmergui’s I Wish I Were the Moon and The Storyteller
• Rod Humble’s The Marriage and Stars over Half Moon Bay (PC Only)
• Reflect (PC Only)
• Where Is My Heart? (PC and MAC)
• Tale of Tales The Graveyard and the Real Time Art Manifesto. The Graveyard has a free version. We won’t look at The Path because that’s not free.

For security reasons, WordPress will not allow you to upload Scratch or Game Maker files to your blog. However, you can upload your files to a separate server and share them through there as well as upload screenshots from your game.

If you created your game in Scratch, you can even share your file on the Scratch homepage.

• Create an account.
• Log into your account.
• Open your project in Scratch.
• Click the ‘Share’ button at the top of the Scratch program window.

This will upload your project to the Scratch Homepage. Once there, you can embed the code to your game on your blog as an image:

• On the right-hand column of your Scratch project page, scroll all the way down to where it says ‘Embed’.
• Click the ‘Embed’ link.
• Copy the text for ‘embed as an image’.
• Go to your WordPress blog and create a new post.
• Click the ‘HTML’ tab above the text box.
• Paste the HTML code.
• To continue editing your post as normal, click the Visual tab.
• Once posted, clicking on the image will link to your Scratch project page: