Group Project: Game Design

The purpose of this assignment is to:

1)  Get more insight into one of the issues/questions we've explored in class, such as violence, gender education etc. You'll be putting your ideas and course theories into practice.

2)  Learn how to make a persuasive argument. This is the most difficult kind of writing/speaking because you really have to understand your subject matter and your audience.

3) Learn how to creatively problem-solve together.

If you recall the first week of class, I did a quick history of the world, which essentially argued that the group with the best information who can communicate it the best wins, period. Doesn't matter if it's a company, an empire, even a sports team I imagine. It concluded with the skills you'll need to survive, and even thrive after graduation.  Details

You won't be making a game, but designing one (at least in enough detail that you can talk about intelligently). Watch out for "scope creep," basically biting off more than you can chew. Also, sometimes it's easy to get bogged down in the really small technical details of how a particular aspect of the game might work; your audience will only care about the overall concept.

Video games are expensive and complex to actually make, so a more reasonable approach would be your team creates a "pitch" session for a game company or someone else who has the authority or resources to "greenlight" your project (for example, if your game is educational, your audience might be a school board that you want to adopt your game into the schools). Alternatively, you might want to go low tech, and stick to cards or other paper based games that you could actually make and demo, but still you'll want to do a pitch session.

Another approach that might save time is modification of an existing game (for example, adding race, class or gender to a game that lacks it, or integrating real world information into a game that's based on fiction). You might also consider "culture jamming." This is typically done by making a fake advertisement or by modifying a real one in order to subvert its message.

You can also use paper mock-ups of important aspects that allow you to plan your game and communicate your concept (written descriptions or images of characters, a storyboard that represents story/action, a diagram of different paths, maps or representative illustrations (maybe alterations of existing ones using Photoshop?). Please turn in these planning documents, along with you final presentation materials (for example, if you do a Powerpoint presentation).

Note: We're not interested in "gameplay" or what makes a game fun, except secondarily (for example, how can we make an educational game that's fun, or should beating a cop to death with a shovel while he begs for his life be fun?).


Evaluation:

Assessment will be based on:

Mastery of course issues and concepts

Creativity

Persuasiveness

Research

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