Class Argument and Interactive Narratives

The unit is transversal to boardgames and digital games and introduces Game Design as a fundamental component of all games and of creative work in defining, exploring, and perfecting a vision for playable experience in an original game. The unit is meant to provide students with a basic literacy of game design and related skills in specification, prototyping, and testing. Game Design is the core aspect of original creative work in games and frames the remaining disciplines in game development work. Game Design literacy and an understanding of the game development process in a game design perspective are crucial to not only game design work but also work in all the other disciplines in a game development team. The unit is therefore critical to the degree, not only in preparation of more advance game design units, but also for complementing development and art units.

Not applicable

Basic Concepts Definition of Game, Game Design and Game Development; Transmediality in Games; Introduction to Player Profiles. Game Creation Model Game Design Iterative Process; Game Design Atoms; Prototyping; Playtesting; Publishing. Game Structural Elements Rules; Procedures; Player Model; Limits; Resources; Conflict; Results; Mechanics. Low-level Game Design Systems Thinking; Analysis and Synthesis; Components of the Game as a System (Objects, Properties, Behaviors, Relationships).

This course has a strong connection with the course Digital Game Development, where the narratives, characters and worldbuilding will be directly intertwined with that course's final project.   Furthermore, students will be given practical examples of games to narratively analyze using diverging perspectives from game design, literature and expectations as a player.

BRAITHWAITE, B., & SCHREIBER, I. (2008). Challenges for game designers. Boston: Charles River Media. FULLERTON, T., SWAIN, C., HOFFMAN S. S. (2008). Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games, 2nd Ed. Amsterdam; Boston; Heidelberg; London; New York: Elsevier: Morgan Kaufmann. ISAAC, E. (2022). Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms. Routledge. HUNICKE, R., LEBLANC, M., & ZUBEK, R. (2004). MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research. AAAI-04 Workshop on Challenges in Game AI. SALEN, K., ZIMMERMAN, E. (2004). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT Press.