Discovering Game

Sneak Preview! Discovering Game: Game Design for Librarians

The October session of Discovering Game: Game Design for Librarians via Simmons College GSLIS Continuing Education has been CANCELED due to low enrollment. We’ll try to offer it again in March 2010 as a four-week course, which brings the price down a little; registration information will be available on the Simmons CE Workshops page.

To encourage people to sign up, and preview the course, we are offering the first week of Discovering Game for FREE! Participate by reading the article, playing the assigned game, trying the game design assignment, and sharing your thoughts on the google discussion group, Discovering Game.

Week 1 Content follows, thanks for playing along!

1. Introductions: Who are you? What games do you play? What is your experience with game design? Optional: Create an avatar and upload it to your profile.
2. Play Tetris for at least 15 minutes. What was the experience like? What did you like about the game? What didn’t you like?
   
3. Create a game with randomly assigned goals, tools & obstacles, as directed in Assignment 1. What were your items? What did you come up with? What was the experience like? Can you think of a variation on this assignment to use in a library setting?

• Understanding Games 1. http://www.kongregate.com/games/pixelate/understanding-games-episode-1
• Understanding Games 2. http://www.kongregate.com/games/pixelate/understanding-games-episode-2
• Handout: Avatar Creation

Week 1 Assignment: Design Your Own Game!

Create a game with randomly assigned goals, tools & obstacles. Pick one from each list!

Goals (choose ONE):

• Stop the Killer Bees
• Catch the Star
• Find the Treasure
• Win the Race
• Get the Cookie
• Defeat the Troll
• Save the Cheerleader

Tools (Choose ONE):

• Slingshot
• Flashlight
• Skateboard
• Coconut
• Book
• Pen
• Spell
• Pony
• Hadron Collider

Obstacles (Choose ONE):

• Pit of Snakes
• A cat
• Flesh eating virus
• Flying Monkeys
• Brambles
• Sunspots
• Mind bullets
• Evil genuis

Come up with a title and premise for your game–the wackier, the better! An example follows:

Game Title: Frosting of Ill Intent

• Tool: A Gun
• Obstacle : Frosting
• Goal: Rescue a Lady

Bob the Baker has just finished baking the cake for a lovely lady named Lily. As he prepares to frost his cake, he decides to use one of his family’s secret recipes that he has never used before. Upon completing the recipe, the frosting takes on a life of its own and starts out on a rampage throughout the city. Bob goes next door to the toy store and picks up a water gun in hopes that he can dissolve the frosting. As he runs out of the toy store he hears a scream and sees that his frosting has taken Lily captive. In order to save her, he must defeat what he has created; all he knows is that this frosting really is ill intentioned.

Discovering Game: Game Design for Librarians, a Simmons GSLIS online CE class

I will be co-teaching a online continuing education workshop for Simmons College GSLIS from October 1-November 15, 2009, with Beth Gallaway: Discovering Game: Game Design for Librarians.

Course Description: Learn to engage youth at the library with interactive, multimedia, content creation workshops: video game design! Not all librarians embrace the same “learn by failing” method that gamers employ; this six-week course will introduce you to the fundamentals of game design and provide guided access to free tools (such as Ben 10 Game Creator, Scratch, Cube, Gimp) that you can use at your library for game design workshops. Content will be delivered through audio lecture, slideshows and video capture, as well as hands on-game play, exercises, and assignments using game design software.

Register online

Sample Syllabus (Coming Soon!)