Course Overview

This course covers the entire process of game design – from concept development through to production. Through lectures, discussion, and in-class workshops, students will learn formal tools for analyzing components of gameplay and how to apply these tools to solve real game design challenges.

As a capstone project for the course, teams of students will each design and implement an original game using the design principles covered.

The class is open to students from all schools and backgrounds. Students with programming, writing, artistic or other skills will be able to apply them to the final project, but such skills are not requisite for participating in the class.

Workload and Grading

Your grade for this course will be calculated as follows:

Course Project: 75%
Written Work: 25%

In addition to the work listed above, you are expected to participate in class discussions, do all course readings, and complete the gameplay assignments. These elements of the class will be applied after your grade has been computed, and can push your grade up or down as much as half a grade.

Each of these assignments will be described in more detail below.

Course Project

You will work in groups to design a game over the course of this class, moving from an idea through to a completed game in just under fourteen weeks. During this time, there will be a number of assignments related to the project. Please see the project packet for more details on each deliverable. Your grade for the course project will be based on your overall performance across all project-related assignments.

The course project will be completed entirely in groups. There is no such thing as too much collaboration within a group! You are all completing just one project, so you are expected to work on it together. Additionally, do not hesitate to ask for help from the professor or TA. We will provide as much support for you as we can.

Written Work

During this class, you will be expected to complete five papers, each of which will be worth 5% of your grade. Unlike the project, these papers must be completed individually. These papers will consist of analyses of games which you will have played as part of your gameplay assignments. More details will be provided when they are assigned.

Course Readings

You are expected to complete all readings required for this course, in order to participate fully in class discussion. Readings are listed in the syllabus and will be available on the course site.

Gameplay Assignment

In this course, you are expected to do a certain amount of critical gameplay. Sometimes we will assign you specific games; at other times you will have some freedom to choose. However, we expect that you will complete 2-3 hours of gameplay each week during the first half of the course, and that you will not only play games which you have previously been exposed to. This course intends to – and will! – stretch your gameplay boundaries.

Class Participation

Game design requires hands-on practice, and so this class includes a number of discussions and in-class exercises. Your engagement and participation in these exercises are expected.

Course Materials

Each group will be required to purchase the following materials:

Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud
One copy of the card game Lost Cities for every two group members. If you have an odd number of group members, round up.
One copy of the board game Settlers of Catan for every four group members. If you have more than four group members, round down; otherwise, round up.

We also strongly recommend that you purchase the following book:

The Game Design Reader, ed. Salen & Zimmerman

Readings taken from these books will be put on reserve, but both are crucial to an analytic understanding of game design. Understanding Comics provides one of the best analyses of any medium to date. The Game Design Reader collects an unparalleled assortment of core readings in game theory and design.

All other readings will be made available on the course website or handed out in class.

Besides Lost Cities and Settlers of Catan, you will be required to play a variety of additional games for this course. You are not required to purchase any of them, but if you do not, then you must find another way to play.

The Games Research Lab ("EGGPLANT Lab") at Teacher's College has a collection of games and is open daily; please contact the lab for the lab hours for the semester. You may also wish to investigate a game rental service such as Gamefly, or trade games with other students in the class.

Course Policies

Collaboration Policy

On the course project, you are permitted to collaborate as much as you like within your group, and to ask for help or critique from other students in the class. If you intend to use resources outside the class, we suggest you run it by Bernie first.

On all individual assignments, collaboration will be considered cheating. The written assignments for this course must be completed individually.

Lateness Policy

If you have reason to believe that you will be turning in an assignment late, you must let Bernie know before the assignment is actually due. Please explain why your assignment will be late to help us in addressing the issue. There’s often a good deal that we can do to help, including granting extensions if necessary.

If you hand in an assignment late without letting us know, then your grade will suffer. Individual assignments will be penalized by one third of a grade for each day that they are late. Group assignments (i.e. everything to do with the final project) will receive a grade of zero, which will be factored into your total project grade.

Yes, this is harsh. Get your work in on time, or let us know beforehand.

Administrivia

This material – and more! – is available on the course website on Courseworks. We may use an additional website for the class, which will be linked from the Courseworks page.

You will need to set up a website for your project group. Please speak to Bernie if you have difficulty doing this. Your website should be up by the second week of class, as you will need to post your first project deliverable to your course site on that date.

On your project site, you will be posting documents for us to review, including demo code and game versions when appropriate. The site should also be used for your internal group work, including sharing documents (for example, art samples) and running discussions as necessary.

All individual assignments should be e-mailed to Bernie, Brian, and Megan (as should all class correspondence). Please paste assignments into the body of the e-mail as well as attaching it as a .docx, .doc, or .txt file.

All project deliverables should be posted on your project site and e-mailed to us at the above addresses.

Contact Information

We are available to talk after class (usually), by email, during office hours, and by appointment. Specifically, you can reach us at:

Instructor

Bernard Yee (bhy5 at columbia dot edu)

TAs

Brian Anthony Smith (bas2137 at columbia dot edu)
Megan Myers (mm2614 at columbia dot edu)

Bernie's office hours are by appointment only. Please feel free to contact him via IM (AIM: bernardy, Y!: curiouschimp) to set up an appointment.

Brian's office hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3-4pm in the Computer Science TA Room (122 Mudd). Brian will also be able to meet by appointment.

Megan's office hours are Mondays from 10-11am in 105 Lehman, behind the circulation desk on the first floor of the Barnard library on the Barnard campus.

Good luck in the class! We can’t wait to see your games!