Introduction to Computer Game Design

Designing computer games is a challenging task. It is not as simple as just having an idea or jumping straight into coding or creating visual assets without a plan. A high-quality game design must be well structured and documented, carefully crafted for a specific target audience, communicated and negotiated with a team of other designers, scoped to be implementable by a given team of developers within time constraints, and evaluated and iterated on many times until a finely tuned game experience emerges.

A professional game designer is an engineer of entertainment. Thus, in this subject, students will be taught the theoretical concepts and practical methodologies needed to ideate, communicate, implement, and improve upon your designs. In this way, students will learn to combine their existing software and game development skills with creativity and iterative design thinking to craft compelling interactions between players and the system of rules that govern them.

Students will start by applying these theories and process to the creation of a physical board game prototype before moving on to creating a digital game in a popular game engine. This subject does not teach game development (e.g. coding or art asset creation) but instead requires students to self-learn what is needed to implement their group's shared vision. Students will adopt a kit-bashing approach to rapidly prototype and iterate on their game designs and playtest them with other students on a weekly basis to collect and analyse feedback. By the end of the session, students will have both a board game and digital game that are novel and refined, which can be used in future employment portfolios to highlight interaction design skills in entertainment domains.