Teaching Game Design at the Masters of Digital Games at the University of Malta.

This fall I have been teaching a study unit on Game Design at our Masters in Digital Game at the University of Malta. This is the first year we teach the course, and we are starting with a small group of students. We can be flexible and find individual solutions in case our structure isn't optimal this first time around. Except me teaching at the masters' there is Rilla Khaled who teaches game design with me, there is Gordon Calleja and Costatino Oliva who teaches game analysis, and there is Georgios Yannakakis who, together with two teachers from ICT, teaches computing science for game development. We also have a fourth strand in the masters, which is commercialization and project management. This is taught by industry professionals, this year by the CTO of TRC.

I have been teaching game design and related subject since 2004, but somehow it always feels like it is the first time. During the summer of 2012 I planned this introductory course in game design, but as soon as got hold of the students' contact details I sent out a survey to them to get an idea about previous experience in both the playing of games and of developing them.

This is the short description of the course:

"The course address the role of the game designer, the structure of games, how to work with formal elements as well as dramatic, and ways to approach system dynamics. Students work in groups and conceptualize and prototype smaller games."

Concerns

I had several concerns while I was planning the course. How to balance theory and practice? Were to begin - which topics need we start with, and which can wait? How do we make sure the group dynamics work out? And what about creating a safe environment for experimentation despite that their work is graded?

I'll go through my main concerns, listing them, and describe how I aimed to solve them. Then, I'll tell you how it went!

- What to teach them - where do I start, and in what order should I place the content?

I decided to use a course book as a basic skeleton for the course. I had, unconsciously, already decided to use Tracy Fullerton's book Game Design Workshop, but just in case I would like to change my mind I browsed through the rest of my design library. I stuck with Fullerton's book because it is the one that put most weight on prototyping and play-testing, and does so in a very concrete way. This agrees with how I like to work in design. As recommended reading I added chapters from other books for certain topics, such as Bates' chapters on what project documents are useful in game productions.

Also on the list of recommended reading is Brathwaite's “Challenges for Game Designers”.
It has an excellent and condensed introduction chapter defining important terms and approaches. The remainder of the book contains design challenges/exercises for different types of games and game contexts.
Another one is Koster's "A Theory of Fun". This book has had a large impact on the vocabulary used in the area of game design. Koster just gave a speech at GFC Online (October 2012) taking the perspective of "ten years after" - that is, ten years after the publication of the book. The slides for the talk are here: http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/gdco12/Koster_Raph_Theory_Fun_10.pdf.
Yet another great book on game design is Schell's The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. If I had not used Fullerton's Game Design Workshop as the main course book I would have used this one.

-  How to achieve a balance between theory and practice? Students need the practice to appreciate the theory, and they need the theory when working practically. (This is something Jesse Schell have been blogging about too)

I had seven seminars and seven workshops to work with. Part of the first one would go to overview and introduction, and the end would be the final seminar. I considered what they absolutely HAVE to know about the design, and what they MUST learn to do and think about when designing. I plucked those topics, and then added workshops where they would apply the knowledge in the topics. This meant that I was not using the order in Fullerton's book, but I could still use the full chapters for different seminars.

Given the large amount of time that it would take for the students to complete the assignments they needed to do in order to practice game design I aimed to only add the absolutely necessary texts as reading assignments. Besides the selected chapters in Fullerton's book I only added two texts as mandatory reading: one about Hunicke and LeBlanc's MDA model and the other about Dorman's Machination framework.

In the first seminar the students got to choose from the course literature about which texts to champion. This text, they would in one of the seminars present to their co-students and prepare a discussion about.

There is  a list of the topics we had at the seminars, and a list of workshops and assignments in the end of this post.

- How do I make sure that they early get practical experience of designing different types of games? (There is a risk of individuals getting so immersed in one idea or problem that they do not want to focus on anything else.)

It turned out that this particular group of students all were graduated computing scientists and many of them had partaken in game development projects. I decided that even though they would be able to create digital prototypes from start, I would encourage them to stay with pen and paper. This way they would be able to quickly try several different designs, and they wouldn't get distracted by coding problems. During the first three weeks they prototyped three different games. Then, they got to choose one of them to develop further. This game was play-tested and iterated for three more weeks.  I hoped that this would help them to have their focus on the core design as well as on the experience their certain design might result in for the player.

- How do I cater for good group dynamics in the student groups? (Or at least be prepared to sort out things if it becomes terrible.)

I planned for having two occasions for group division. In the first seminar I divided them into two groups using coin flips, thus making a random group division. Then, after having made their first three game designs they would be able to change groups for the second half of the course. This would make sure that if two persons who for some reason cannot work out their differences would be able to change groups. In the one of the game design exercises a beginning task was to fill in a Meyers-Briggs Personality test - I added it in as part of the exercise so that they might use personality properties of some kind of system as part of the design of a game that contains characters. I hoped for a secondary effect where they would be aware of each other's strengths as individuals when working in groups. In my experience shortcomings of others are easier to accept and overcome when one have concrete knowledge (or some kind of belief or interpretation) of others strengths.

- On Malta, student's work is graded. How would I make sure to create an environment where student feel that they can be creative, where they take risks, and where they are not mentally frozen by performance anxiety?

I divided the assignments I gave into those that would be graded and not graded. All the design exercises except the final deliveries were to stay without grade. At the same time, the final deliveries would report on and be a result on what they had been producing during the course. But then, they would have been able to pick one of three designs they liked best, and had been able to iterate that design several times.

How it went

I have the impression that the course went well. The students had a 100% attendance. They delivered 100% of their assignments, and not a single one of them was late. For me this is the very first time that has happened. The group of students was very small, and they all had responsibilities in the seminars, so that could have been a reason. But still: Highscore! They also volunteered for extra work, and went the extra mile of doing the extra exercises.  When the students had handed in their final assignments (an individual short-paper, a production report, a game design document and a game prototype) I was quite impressed by their work. They had managed to create games, describe how they did it, showing that they had understanding for the process. I had played the games with a colleague the day before the seminar, so I could get them some feedback on that too. Next year I'll schedule more time for playing the students' games though, in order to get time to explore all features. For their individual short papers I had asked them to define an important design problem and give suggestions for how to explore the same.  Here, they all had picked very interesting and relevant topics, which we spent most of the last seminar discussing these.

Ending discussion

I had created an online survey for the students to fill in, but some topics I wanted to ask them about face to face. In the last seminar we spent half an hour discussing the course. What had worked and what had not worked?

 It seems that the balance between theory and practice had worked well - the students had recognised that they were, in the workshop, practising the same skills and topics they had been discussing in the seminar the same day.

The workload seems to have been fairly well adjusted. I was worried that I had given them too much (see list of assignment and bear in mind that they had 3 other courses running in parallel). But they had appreciated the incremental nature of the workload, that they got week-sized chunks of work, and then one week to assemble the work into their final deliveries. They also said that they liked to have this 4 hour marathon (2 hours seminar, 2 hours workshop) rather than dividing their day. I had been worried about that too.

They were generally happy with the clarity of instruction, but would have wanted to learn more about table top RPGs before getting the task of designing one. Next year that could be a part of assignments.

They had really appreciated the guest lecturer from TRC, Jade Pecorella, who talked about how game design is communicated and documented in the projects where she works as a designer.

They had also liked the way they were each championing parts of the course materials, so that (no offence they hastened to say) not only the professor talks all the time, and that it is easier to learn when one has to explain to someone else.

It was difficult to squeeze out something negative of them, but that's what the anonymous survey is for. I told them to think about it as a play-test. If I don't know what's wrong, I can't fix it.  

The next course I will teach will be focussed on AI based game design and prototyping/sketching tools and methods. I really look forward to it. I need to make sure that even if this group are all computing scientists I need to design a course that is meaningful and useful for non-computing scientists too. By the way, there is a quite common understanding that computing scientists or 'coder types' would be less creative than others. This is wrong. Not that we would be MORE creative. Just that we are just as creative as the rest of the population. At least, this is my belief after having witnessed the process of game creation in this group that consists only of computing scientists. (Also - take a poet. Teach her how to program. Will she be less creative when she has more knowledge?)

Our students rock. It's an honour to get to be their teacher.

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List of topics

The list below is presented in the order they appear in the course.

Brainstorming and Conceptualization methods                  

The role of the game designer                       

The structure of games         

Prototyping methods             

Formal Elements                     

MDA - a formal Approach to Game Design and Research (paper)             

Working with Dramatic Elements                 

Play testing    

System Dynamics

Functionality, Completeness and Balance

Simulating Mechanics to Study Emergence (paper on Machinations)     

Revisiting Brainstorming and Conceptualization (creativity in the long run discussion)

Game Design Document (Communicating Game Design)

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List of mandatory Assignments

Presenting chapters from the course book and papers to the seminar (in seminar and assignment) (graded)

Brainstorming Exercises (in workshop)      (not-graded)

Writing my first treatment (assignment)    (not-graded)

Making my first paper prototype (in workshop & assignment) (not graded)                   

Modifying a Battleship Prototype (in workshop) (not graded)                 

Making a Table top role-playing game prototype (in workshop and assignment) (not graded)

The first play-testing and writing a play test-script (assignment) (not graded)              

Play-testing using the other group as testers (in workshop) (not graded)                       

Writing the game design document (in workshop and as assignment)   (graded)

Writing your production report (assignment) (graded)   

Finalizing your prototype for delivery (assignment) (graded)                  

Writing your short-paper (assignment) (graded)               

The text seminar - presenting and questioning a colleague's text. (At the end of the course) (not-graded)

ICIDS Photo Diary Tuesday

 Tuesday morning: Michael, David and Federico initialize the conference.

I was first out giving an invited talk, and I could start before schedule given that everyone was in place - that was great, I didn't have to feel pressed for time and talk quickly in order to get to say everything I want to say.

I started my talk by telling about a letter I got this summer from a Masters' student in Canada. He had read the thesis on Story Construction I wrote in 2001/2002 and wondered about my thoughts on how the field have advanced during the past decade. Since I got that letter I've been thinking a lot about this, and realized that there have been huge strides made. Even though it often feels like trampling in the mud, and that the area just creates tool after tool that no author wants to touch, and that we just keep doggedly chasing after grails that we don't even know if they exist... We have found pretty cool goblets on the way, and that constant chase is what can keep us going. I named a few of the grails many of us keep looking for, then, I gave a recount on my journey, and what I found on the way. I told about the play-testing about the Pataphysic institute, of how players
- simultaneously use mental models of how a mind works and that of MMORPG role taking in battle,
- how they co-create boss monsters with the system, and how intense it can become when they play, and an autonomous entity in the game bleeds in meaning from the real world, but how that is re-interpreted in dialog when players cooperate to neutralise the negative feelings that these boss monsters represent,
- how players attribute intentionality to the autonomous entities despite that they even authored them themselves. Still, they read in and interpret their behaviour as if was something that would have its own will.

Then I went on to note that we have indeed achieved to come closer to some of the grails we thought about ten years ago. For example, we know now thanks to the Sims series, that it indeed is possible to have a sandbox world as a basis for performing actions that in turn can be a sequence of event that, when retold, actually becomes an engaging narrative. The blog stories of Alice and Kev is an example of that. Another dream, an authoring environment that can take the rules implied in language and use them in a functional way is manifest in Inform 7 and its constant development. And "the book that writes itself", generative planned stories, we are coming along in that area too. Of that, Richard Evans' and Emily Shorts Versu is a prime example. Richard talked about this the day after. It felt really nifty that we had worked together on our talks the day before, because then I could just talk about this, our past grails and where we seem to be now, grail-wise, because then, on the last day of the conference, Noah gave a talk on the future of digital interactive narrative. Along the conference I noted that one of the grails that shine most brightly is that of the automated game master. That is, something more than the state of the art/general idea of an automated story manager. An automated game master would also use the game mechanics afforded in a game world together with judgements about how to use plot-points, story-beats, levels of dramatic tension and what-not. Of course, the idea of automating, or having support for the human game master of a table top or live action game is not new, it was just, as topics go, quite a shiny one.

ICIDS was a single track conference, which I was thankful for. I get so frustrated of this condition that you have gone somewhere to be, and to see, and to participate, but then anyway ending up feeling that one misses crucially interesting talks all the time, because one has to choose. (GDC solves this by having the GDC Vault where the talks are recorded, that's the only reason I don't go nuts there).

Below are some pictures of how the day in this blissfully single track continued. The conference program is available here: http://icids2012.vicomtech.tv/files/Program.pdf

In the evening, we had a delightful time. I took a picture of myself and Hartmut, and tried to take it the same way as last time I saw him, which was seven years ago when we were both at Georgia Tech. We were about fifteen-twenty people, and we did dinner the way that seem to be the local custom: to go from different bars and have a pinto at each one. Many interesting conversations, I was for example very intrigued to hear about Uli Spierling's work of using the STRIP planning language as the base for a prototype that let authors experiment with interactive Storytelling.

2012:

2005

ICIDS Diary, Monday

 I run into Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Richard Evans at the hotel, and it turns out that all three of us still need to work some more on our talks. We have a working session in the lobby, before joining the others for dinner.
 
I have this idea to try to use less walls of text and more illustrations than I normally do. But I'm afraid that I'll forget what to say unless I have the text available, so I have decided to try using index cards.
 
For dinner David Oyarzun, the general chair, takes us into San Sebastian, and we have a brief stare at the cathedral. We find a place in a former bull-fighting that can accommodate all of us. I think we are around 15 to 20 persons. On the bar a selection of pintos are served from which we can select. In the Baskian parts of Spain tapas are called pintos, and are a bit more elaborate (or that's what people tell me, I wouldn't know).
 
We don't stay too late, and back at the hotel Noah is kind enough to listen me practicing the talk I am to give the next day and giving me some good advice. I had overdone the picture part, that's for sure. We also came up with a title! "The Grails of Interactive Storytelling". Luckily there is still time for revision.


ICIDS: The Fifth International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling