June 26, 2009: Game Design Concepts

Kira pointed this one out: Game Design Concepts, an online course covering the process of making a game, from idea generation to prototyping to playtesting. The instructor is Ian Schreiber, who wrote Challenges for Game Designers, and has been teaching game design at Ohio University for a couple years.

The course has no registration fees except for the required text, but classes start next Monday, June 29. Interested, but don't have the time to commit? Most of the "lecture" will be occuring on the open blog, so anyone can follow along.

Since the office will be closed next week, I think I'll add the site to my Morning Coffee. Some topics in the syllabus look very interesting, especially "Critical vocabulary: what is a game?" and "Blindtesting techniques." Anything that facilitates better communication between designers sounds like a great idea to me, and you can never have too many tricks for testing your game.

-- Paul Chapman