Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Section I: History, Career & Ethics
- Obj 1.01 - Understand skills and careers to work in the game industry
- Obj 1.02 - Recall the history of games and the game industry
- Obj 1.03 - Understand rating systems and ethics in the gaming industry
- Section II: Understand the Elements of Game Theory
- Obj 2.00 - Understand elements of game theory
- Obj 2.01 - Understand player experience
- Section III: Apply Pre-production Techniques to Plan Game Prototypes
- Obj 3.00 - Apply pre-production techniques to plan game prototypes
- Obj 3.01 - Summarize the development process of game design
- Obj 3.02 - Apply game conceptualization methods including brainstorming, sketching, and storyboarding
- Obj 3.04 - Apply procedures to produce an original game prototype
- Obj 3.06 - Evaluate the prototype using game design parameters
- Section IV: Apply Procedures to Develop a Game
- Obj 4.00 - Apply procedures to develop a game
- Obj 4.04 - Produce an original game using existing game theory and design
- Oral Presentation
- Conclusion
Introduction
The Game Design course is a heavily rigorous and intensive class that demands much out of its students, including hard work, dedication, and discipline. To put it shortly, Game Design is hard...REALLY hard. The focus of this class is on learning the basic techniques used to create all types of games and how to use a game engine, specifically the Unity game engine, to create video games. This course covers almost all the basics of game design, past and present, which allows students to construct the foundations of their learning to prepare for more advanced portions of game development. To condense all of that into a single statement, the Game Design course is a big load to take in, but if completed with care and determination, students learn all they need about the foundations of game design, including game mechanics, player experience, and the design pipeline, to prepare them for their future in the course, and possibly the game industry itself.
Section I: History, Career & Ethics
Artifact 1 - Career Reflection
If I were to have a career in the game industry, there's no doubt that I'd want to pursue a career in programming. In fact, a career in programming is the future that I am currently pursuing right now. The reason why I started down this path is because of a friend of my dad. His name is Jason, and he's been programming for almost 20 years, and currently works as a software developer/engineer. A while ago, when he was talking to me about his job as a senior programmer, I found that I was extremely fascinated by the things he was talking about. As a programmer, you need to have a very thorough understanding of highly advanced mathematics such as linear algebra, calculus, probability, geometry, and statistics. Math also happens to be the core subject that I'm most proficient in, since I both love doing it (most of the time) and enjoy the challenge when I get stuck. That problem solving skill is crucial for being a programmer. Other knowledge that's extremely useful to have as a programmer includes understanding of binary code, and fluency in multiple coding languages. The more coding languages you know, the better programmer you'll be in general. This year, we've been working in the Unity game engine, which uses the C# programming language. Although C# is a relatively simple coding language, an advantage of learning it is that it serves as an excellent transition to more advanced languages such as the C++ language used by the Unreal game engine. Once we started coding in Unity, I had no doubt that this is the path that I want to continue down.
Artifact 2 - Ethics Reflection
In the game industry, ethics is and shall always be a core part of game design. When considering your target audience, not only do you have to think about who that audience is and how you'll appeal to them, but you also have to consider how to appeal to them in the appropriate manner for their age group. If your game features a lot of violent and sexual content, then it's obviously not suited for younger children. However, there used to exist the problem where kids not yet mature enough to see that kind of content were getting their hands on these games. It got so out of hand to the point where the federal government had to step in, and basically said to the game industry, "Do something about this, or we will." And so, the game industry responded, which lead to the creation of the ESRB. Now, thanks to the ESRB, we have games with ratings associated with the content featured in the game to warn parents about mature content before they purchase it for their child. In addition, parents are not allowed to purchase games that have too high of an ESRB rating for a child that does not meet the age requirement. Teenagers that have their own money are also not allowed to purchase games with age requirements that they don't meet. With that being said, it's also important for game developers to think about how their designs reflect and influence the maturity of their games.
Section II: Understand the Elements of Game Theory
Artifact 3 - Game Mechanics Reflection
Game mechanics are the underlying foundations of what constitutes a game. There are several different kinds of game mechanics that all come together to form the goal the player must achieve, as well as the process that the player goes through to achieve that goal. Game mechanics define what your player can and cannot do while playing your game, and also determine the overall quality of the player's experience as they're playing your game. There are seven different core mechanics found in every game: space, time, rules, procedures, objects/attributes/states, skill, and chance. All seven of these mechanics work together to create a sense of flow in the game. A player enters a state of flow while playing a game when the level of challenge is balanced with the level of player skill. This state of flow, combined with reasonable and thoughtful mechanics, is what creates player experience.
Artifact 4 - Exploring Game Mechanics Project
In this project, I isolated each of the seven game mechanics in a board game called Sub Terra, and described how each mechanic is incorporated into the game. This project helped me learn exactly how game mechanics influence gameplay by taking a closer look at the game and seeing how each mechanic contributes to player experience, both individually and collectively.
Artifact 5 - Game Genre Project
Section III: Apply Pre-production Techniques to Plan Game Prototypes
Artifact 6 - Design Pipeline Reflection
The design pipeline is broken up into three different stages: pre-production, production, and post-production. Before a game ever reaches the marketplace or goes into the hands of the consumer, it goes through the design pipeline in iterative cycles until it's refined enough to be released to the public. Each stage of the pipeline features several major tasks and milestones, and all three of these stages exist for the sole purpose of completing these tasks, despite the possibility of some being altered or repeated a number of times until development is completed. Pre-production stage is basically the planning phase of the game: it establishes the who, what, when, where, why, and how's of both the game and it's concept. This stage is arguably the most important, because the more time a game design team spends mapping out and planning their game, the less time and money they have to spend actually making the game. The production phase is where the game itself is actually created. In production, there are several different milestones that a game reaches until it's completed. These milestones include first playable, alpha version, code freeze, beta version, code release, and master/gold. As development progresses, each of these milestones marks a major event in the evolution of the game, all of which must be passed before being released into the market. Once the game is (seemingly) bug-free ready to be shipped, the design team has reached the post-production phase, in which a majority of the time is spent on marketing and advertising the game, as well as actually shipping the game to stores. In addition, there is also a lot of time spent on maintenance, because no game is 100% complete on release. There's always going to be at least one person who can manage to find a bug in your completed game, and those bugs require patching. However, once the entire process is finished, you've got yourself a finished game that's out in the real world. So what's next? You move onto your next game, which means it's back to square one!
Artifact 7 - Pre-production Artifacts
Artifact 8 - Designing a Prototype Activity
Artifact 9 - Pre-production Reflection
As stated before, the pre-production stage corresponds with the planning phase of the production pipeline. It specifically involves defining, refining, and finalizing the game's concept, as well as determining various parameters and laying the foundations for the production phase. In addition, this phase is where the game concept is tested vigorously to demonstrate an clear and understandable proof of concept. Some major tasks involved in pre-production include brainstorming, budgeting, storyboarding, level design, proof of concept, creation of design documents, creation of timelines, and initialization of production tools.
Section IV: Apply Procedures to Develop a Game
Artifact 10 - Production Reflection
When I work with the Unity game engine, either one of two things happen. I breeze through a project easily with almost no problems whatsoever, or Unity suddenly decides that it hates me and doesn't want to work anymore and I end up spending hours trying to fix this one annoying problem that gets in the way of everything else. But I have to say, through all the up's and down's I've had with this engine, I've had fun working and programming with it nevertheless. Most of all, I enjoyed debugging scripts with errors in them beforehand. Just going through and patching up the little errors that made the whole game unable to function properly was very satisfying to do. That includes both the process and viewing the end result working how it's supposed to.
Artifact 11 - Game Production Artifacts
Oral Presentation
Conclusion
And now, the finale of it all. This is where the PBM ends. This is where I finally get to go to bed and wake up in a couple hours. To be honest, just going through all the material again while making this PBM not only refreshed me on the material, but also showed me just how far I've come in this class. Through this course, I've learned about the history of game design, spanning all the way back to the first game ever made, game theory, player experience, game mechanics, game genres, game ethics, career pathways, the design pipeline, game production and development, as well as how all of the above have their own real life applications. In addition, I've also gained experienced with one of the most commercially used game engines available, while also learning my first ever coding language. Aside from new knowledge gained, I've also grown as artist, both with a pencil and with a mouse (sadly). And, more importantly, I feel that I've also grown as a person throughout this year. I've learned more about myself as a game designer and future programmer. I've learned that no matter what I do, there's always room to improve. There's always new heights to reach for, and I know that I'll always be working towards becoming better. But, the most important thing I've learned tonight is...holy shit I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Screw you guys, I'm going home.