Courses tagged with "Social+media" (5)

This course will take the student through the basics of visual development: from visual storytelling to character design; from creatures to environment design. Beginning with simple visual elements, the student will learn how to create images that tell a story visually, as well as support a production in animation, live action, and video games.

Software engineering and asset production are the means of digital game development, but the end is an intentional experience. Digital game design is the process of creating, implementing and iteratively refining that experience.

This hands-on course will introduce you to the theory (lehr) and practice (kunst) of digital game design. You will modify, design, build and test a number of toys and games using the Perlenspiel gameclavier, a cloud-based, abstract microgame engine programmed in JavaScript. Lectures and readings will familiarize you with key principles and vocabulary of general design, together with issues and methods specific to the development of digital games.

Nearly all devices now used to play digital games are connected to a network. This fact has revolutionized the game development process. Telemetric instrumentation can silently measure and transmit data on the behavior and performance of games and their players. Statistical analysis of the resulting databases can be a powerful tool for refining and verifying the attainment of design criteria.

This course provides experience in devising measurable experience goals, together with the basic techniques and mathematics needed to capture and analyze player behavior. It concludes with a reflection on the ethical implications of data-driven design, and the role of game designers as creators of cultural artifacts imbued with meaning and the potential for influence.

Gamecrafting is a second-order design problem. Unlike traditional linear media, in which the form and sequence of an experience are created by the designers, game experiences are created by the players. Good game designers must be therefore be good anticipators, striving to imagine and optimize the range of interesting choices afforded by their designs. They must also anticipate the range of experiences they can afford to afford, based on the practical limits of available time and resources.

This course focuses on the basic skills of scoping a game project to keep it manageable, iterating on design details to refine and improve the player experience, and thoroughly testing game prototypes (using both automation and live subjects) to determine if experience goals are being achieved.