Game World Design (Spring 2019)

Abstract

This course teaches the conceptual foundation and practical implementation of game worlds.

Description

Game World Design is the design of a cohesive game world rooted in narrative design, world building, and character logic.

Students gain the ability to design game worlds from a narrative standpoint in order to create rich experiences for players.

Game World Design focuses on the prototyping of game worlds. It will comprise three major dimensions: Conceptual world design, prototype asset development, and presentation of concepts and results.

In the conceptual section, the course will focus on general considerations of worldness and world building, basic narrative considerations, and character logic. The prototype asset development section will focus on implementing these conceptual reflections. This includes the development of a visual pitch for a digital game and implementing a prototype of the game world concept, including assets, in a game engine of your choice. In general, this will include the production of a vertical slice of a gameworld. The presentation component consists in presentation and feedback on intermediate and final results of this design process to prepare for in-team as well as customer communication of projects under development.

Formal prerequisites

This is course offers an introduction to world design and asset prototyping for games. A wide knowledge of games from different genres and game development tools is desirable, even if not required. Participants must be willing to familiarize themselves with a game engine, a 3D program and a 2D program of their own choice, engage with theory, and work iteratively on their world design.

Intended learning outcomes

After the course, the student should be able to:

• Create game world concepts
• Reflect on the audio-visual and technical dimension of content creation in a digital game.
• Communicate about and collaborate in creating game worlds/assets professionally.
• Create and use concept art (sketches, storyboards, art bibles).
• Pitch a design concept audio-visually (game world concept pitch presentation, mock-up trailer, posters).
• Generate prototype in-game assets (gray-box level layout incl. 2D or 3D elements).
• Reflect on the production processes, pipelines and tools.