Course Preview | Professional Certificate in Game Design from MIT xPRO
5:23 min
37
Welcome to this course. I'm Michael Jakobsson, instructor, and teacher at the MIT Game Lab. And I'm Philip Tan, research scientist at the MIT Game Lab. This course is aimed at people who have a foundation in software development, that already know how to code and want to learn about game design and game development. At MIT we always focus on being a part of building a better future. The game industry is currently dealing with a situation where issues of misogyny, lack of cultural diversity, and unethical business practices are festering and threatening to sink ships if things don't change.
We will look at opportunities for better game industry practices and better games through engagement with lessons from critical studies and design thinking. Gaining an understanding for how to enact positive change will be the strongest competitive advantage that the participants of this course will acquire. In short, we aim to give a strong platform for breaking into the professional practice of making games.
Before we get into the weeds of design and implementation, we're going to establish a couple of foundational concepts and terminology. They'll help us use the same vocabulary throughout the whole course. Keep in mind not everyone in the game industry uses the same terms in exactly the same way, and that's okay. Every design team goes through a phase where they have to figure out how they want to communicate.
Another part of the professionalization of a game designer is understanding and knowing how to use game design methods and practices. This involves all the steps of the development process from ideation to the end of a game's lifecycle. We will focus on the iterative design process, and practice the use of prototyping and playtesting throughout the development project. We will learn how to embrace player feedback as the valuable data it is, even when it is pointing out flaws in our designs or even telling us to discard a concept entirely.
Whatever design materials the game we're making will be using, we always start out using physical design materials, or virtual implementations of physical materials when working with distributed teams. This way we can focus on testing potential solutions and making design decisions, and thus making progress in our project without being slowed down by implementing these solutions in code. Physical games, like board games, are also great teaching tools, since the inner workings of the game aren't blackboxed, but can be analyzed and modified by the player.
When designing a game, it's easy to get tunnel vision on the product you're making. After all, it's right in front of you whether it's in code or cardboard. So, it's natural and pretty satisfying to tinker with the systems, the rules, the pieces, the art, and the music, until it's all complex and polished. However, our approach at MIT always returns the focus back to the players. We will constantly remind you that the game isn't really anything until it's played. We design games for people, and people need to be foremost in our minds throughout the whole design process.
Right from the start, we'll be asking you about your own play experiences. And as the course goes on you'll use that grounding to broaden your perspective to other people who may play your game. This means taking into account their experiences and expectations, their desires for a game, and their understanding of the stuff you make. Games can help us build relationships between people, communicate ideas to others, and make their lives a little deeper or better, assuming that we do a good job with the design.
In the second half of the course, we'll introduce development of digital games. We'll provide a basic game skeleton built on the Unity game engine, which is well established in the industry and that you can download for free. The structure of a Unity project has its quirks, both useful and mildly annoying. However, the code that you'll be writing in Unity is based on C#. So, if you're already familiar with object-oriented programming languages, it should be quite easy to understand. More importantly, we will be talking about best practices in digital game development that should apply no matter what language or game engine you may encounter going forward.
When we have dealt with both the theory and practice of all the different parts of the game design process. We will put them together in a capstone project that showcases the learner's understanding of the craft and the skills you have developed. This phase is also where we will offer a number of guest talks by active industry professionals who can provide valuable glimpses into what life is like out on the game industry factory floor.
We will look at opportunities for better game industry practices and better games through engagement with lessons from critical studies and design thinking. Gaining an understanding for how to enact positive change will be the strongest competitive advantage that the participants of this course will acquire. In short, we aim to give a strong platform for breaking into the professional practice of making games.
Before we get into the weeds of design and implementation, we're going to establish a couple of foundational concepts and terminology. They'll help us use the same vocabulary throughout the whole course. Keep in mind not everyone in the game industry uses the same terms in exactly the same way, and that's okay. Every design team goes through a phase where they have to figure out how they want to communicate.
Another part of the professionalization of a game designer is understanding and knowing how to use game design methods and practices. This involves all the steps of the development process from ideation to the end of a game's lifecycle. We will focus on the iterative design process, and practice the use of prototyping and playtesting throughout the development project. We will learn how to embrace player feedback as the valuable data it is, even when it is pointing out flaws in our designs or even telling us to discard a concept entirely.
Whatever design materials the game we're making will be using, we always start out using physical design materials, or virtual implementations of physical materials when working with distributed teams. This way we can focus on testing potential solutions and making design decisions, and thus making progress in our project without being slowed down by implementing these solutions in code. Physical games, like board games, are also great teaching tools, since the inner workings of the game aren't blackboxed, but can be analyzed and modified by the player.
When designing a game, it's easy to get tunnel vision on the product you're making. After all, it's right in front of you whether it's in code or cardboard. So, it's natural and pretty satisfying to tinker with the systems, the rules, the pieces, the art, and the music, until it's all complex and polished. However, our approach at MIT always returns the focus back to the players. We will constantly remind you that the game isn't really anything until it's played. We design games for people, and people need to be foremost in our minds throughout the whole design process.
Right from the start, we'll be asking you about your own play experiences. And as the course goes on you'll use that grounding to broaden your perspective to other people who may play your game. This means taking into account their experiences and expectations, their desires for a game, and their understanding of the stuff you make. Games can help us build relationships between people, communicate ideas to others, and make their lives a little deeper or better, assuming that we do a good job with the design.
In the second half of the course, we'll introduce development of digital games. We'll provide a basic game skeleton built on the Unity game engine, which is well established in the industry and that you can download for free. The structure of a Unity project has its quirks, both useful and mildly annoying. However, the code that you'll be writing in Unity is based on C#. So, if you're already familiar with object-oriented programming languages, it should be quite easy to understand. More importantly, we will be talking about best practices in digital game development that should apply no matter what language or game engine you may encounter going forward.
When we have dealt with both the theory and practice of all the different parts of the game design process. We will put them together in a capstone project that showcases the learner's understanding of the craft and the skills you have developed. This phase is also where we will offer a number of guest talks by active industry professionals who can provide valuable glimpses into what life is like out on the game industry factory floor.
