Making Games (Autumn 2019)
Official course description:
Course info
Programme
Staff
Course semester
Exam
Abstract
This course teaches the design and development of video games from prototyping to effective teamwork across disciplinary boundaries. It also covers the most important technical and theoretical foundations of game development.
Description
Video game development is a design-driven process. This course teaches the technical, theoretical, and practical basis of game development. At the same time this course is an exercise in interdisciplinary teamwork, preparing students for working in diverse teams.
Students will learn how to create video games alone and in groups. They will be able to apply established industry methods in the areas design, production, project management, and programming.
In this course students will first learn to explore the design space of games by making a number of focused prototypes. Students will learn the basics of prototyping in theory and practice, the basics of game design, game programming and interaction design, and essential user experience and evaluation techniques. All students will program and design small prototypes and a larger final project individually and in groups.
Students will additionally learn to identify what makes their game unique, what is its technical and design essence, and how to best communicate it. They will learn the basics of marketing and the games business.
Formal prerequisites
This is an introductory course and has not mandatory requirements. However, students will benefit from a certain familiarity with game development technologies.Intended learning outcomes
After the course, the student should be able to:
- Conceptualize, prototype, design, develop and test a digital game individually and in teams.
- Reflect on and act in her role as a team member of a joint game production.
- Reflect on the relation between design and technical implementation in innovation-driven projects.
- Apply different play testing and usability methods.
- Structure an innovation-driven development process using industry-relevant project management methods.
- Practice different concept development, sketching, prototyping, and game design methods.
- Evaluate established technologies, methods and processes for their usefulness in their games project.
- Perform basic programming, art, and/or design activities, applied to computer game development.
- Argue a marketing and business case.
Learning activities
The course is structured around a combination of lectures, guest lectures, exercises, student presentations, and supervision. These learning activities are themselves structured around the production of 4 prototypes and the final game.
The schedule of the class is as follows (each weak has two teaching days):
- August+September: 2 hours of teaching, 4 hours of working on the game, 2 hours of presentation
- October - 3 weeks of intensive lectures and exercises split in two tracks (one for Design and one for Technology)
- November/December - 7 weeks of game making in teams of 4-6 students - Supervision, workshops and guest lectures only
Mandatory activities
Students have to create and present 4 individually created prototypes. Deadlines will be posted in LearnIT.The student will receive the grade NA (not approved) at the ordinary exam, if the mandatory activities are not approved and the student will use an exam attempt.
Course literature
The course literature is published in the course page in LearnIT.
Ordinary exam
Exam type:D: Submission of written work with following oral, external (7-trinsskala)
Exam variation:
D1G: Submission of written work for groups with following oral exam.
Exam description:
The duration of the oral exam is 20 minutes per group. The students have to hand in the following:
- The final game
- A group report consisting of play test results and the press kit of the game
- A 2000 word individual report that is an analysis of their game based on theory presented in weeks 5-8
- The game, the group report (plus the trailer) and the individual report have equal weight in the grading. The group report will be graded according to how well the user testing is executed and how well the game is communicated. The individual part is an analysis of the game that should use the research presented in the lectures of phase two to reflect on specific aspect of the game. It will be graded according to its clarity, originality and rigour.
Form of group exam: group exam