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Design Workshops

Design workshops are held every Friday, unless otherwise noted.

[Schedule] [Why Workshops?] [Useful Tools]

Schedule

Why Workshops?

At the risk of sounding like a rant, one of the problems with modern "gamers" is that they just play computer games. Historically a gamer referred to someone who plays all sorts of games - card games, social games, pen & paper games, and, of course, computer games. Gamers today are much less broad. Even worse, some gamers only play certain types of computer games, such as first person shooters or real-time strategy games.

In order to develop games, a designer needs to be familiar with games in a much broader sense. Certainly a designer that has experience with only a single genreof computer game is much more likely to create derivative experiences that to introduce revolutionary new gameplay. What is perhaps less obvious is the reason why computer game designers need to understand and play non-computer computer games. This reason can be summarized in one word: prototyping.

Writing software takes a long time, particularly for undergraduates who have less experience at it than a professional programmer. Getting a computer game to even the most rudimentary playable state can take weeks. And once you have finished, you might discover that it was not so fun after all, and you need to start over. But time is a luxury you do not have, and you need to be able to identify what is fun and what is not fun quickly. For that you need a prototype - a small version of your game that you can make quickly and play quickly. Non-computer games are often used by designers as their early prototypes; they are easy to make, and it is very simple to alter the rules if something is not fun.

The purpose of the design workshops is to make you a better game desginer by building up your prototype vocabulary. While you may think that it is impossible to prototype your twitch shooter as a turned-based pen & paper game, that is only because you do not have a lot of experience with the many types of non-computer games out there. On these days with will propose, build, and analyze prototypes, both digital and non-digital. With this increased vocabulary, you will be able to be play your games long before you write a single line of code for them.

Useful Tools

While you do not have to write software to make a pen & paper prototype, it helps to have several other tools; things like dice or tokens. In fact, Cheapass Games is a company whose entire business model assumes that you have these things, and that you do not not need to buy new ones every time you get a new game. They just "sell rules", which is what you are learning to write.

The following are just a few items that you might find helpful in designing a game.

Dice

Dice are ideal for random numbers which, as we shall see, are important for simulating certain elements of computer games. Polyhedral dice, like the ones popularized by Dungeons & Dragons are great because they allow you to generate a wide variety of random numbers.

Plastic (or metal) pawns

Just about every board game has them, and they are great for representing the spatial location of your game objects. The game Risk is a great source of pawns.

Coins

If you do not have any game pawns, coins can make a great substitute. Plus, you can flip them to get random values if you do not have any dice.

Playing Cards

Playing cards can also work as a dice subsitute; just shuffle in the range of your random numbers. They are also ideal for representing resources. Like the property cards in Monopoly, they can represent something that the player currently owns.

Play Money

Play money is another grea way of representing resources. It is particularly useful for representing resources that have numerical quantities.

3x5 index cards

If you do not have playing cards or play money, don't worry. Just use index cards instead. Index cards have the added advantage that you can write anything that you want on them.

Construction Paper

Construction paper is great is because it is sturdy and you can turn it into anything you want. Fold it, cut it, write on it. It can become your game boards, your game cards, or even your tokens with a little bit of work.