In my first post I mentioned there is a nice overlap between the two courses I’ve started on EDX.org, “A Complete Guide to Game Design” and “Introduction to Game Development”, so I thought I’d explain how and why.
The Game Development course purely focuses on coding, initially in Love2D/Lua and then in Unity/C#, and more challenging because it requires actual practical work, and submitting a supporting video for each assignment. It requires at least a basic level of coding knowledge, conditions, loops, variables, data structures, etc. Preferably you might have even done the CS50 Computer Science course beforehand, unless you’ve got prior coding experience already.
In contrast, the Game Design course is rather basic. It’s an introduction to analysing games, what makes games fun, the different player types, writing narratives, level design, and game design documentation. Each module is typically a 20 minute video followed by 10 multiple choice questions. It does not require you to create your own concepts or critique games as you might find in a more formal course. It does recommend additional resources to review at the end of each module to gain more understanding of the topic covered, but I do wish they’d perhaps given some optional assignments to help reinforce what you’re learning, even if your work is not marked by anyone. I see this course as a gateway into taking further related courses that each might focus on a concept in more detail, i.e. level design, story-writing.
However, the simplicity of the game design course means you can take both courses simultaneously without any stress, and I feel it does add value by doing them together. It doesn’t completely overlap – there’s nothing I’ve seen in the coding course that focuses on patterns for implementing narratives in a game, so there’s a chunk of the game design course that doesn’t really have anything to reinforce the learning of those modules. Perhaps I’ll add some simple “assignments” of my own to plug the gaps, in case someone finds this page and finds it useful.
Here’s a rough breakdown of how I tackled the modules and assignments as a combined course, and why I’d do them in this order.
Design = A Complete Guide to Game Design
Dev = Introduction to Game Development
| # | Course | Module/Assignment | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Design | Module 1: Course introduction and summary | |
| 2 | Design | Module 2: Game design concepts | |
| 3 | Design | Module 3: History of games and gaming | |
| 4 | Dev | Assignment 0: Pong | What better place to start after discussing the history of games, than recreating essentially the first commercially available video game that soon resulted in many pong clones. |
| 5 | Design | Module 4: Game analysis | |
| 6 | Design | Module 5: The MDA framework | |
| 7 | Dev | Assignment 1: Flappy Bird | After understanding basic game mechanics and types of fun, consider how that applies to a “simple” game like Flappy Bird, increasing level complexity, etc. |
| 8 | Design | Module 6: Traditional & linear storytelling | |
| 9 | Design | Module 7: Nonlinear storytelling | |
| 10 | Design | Module 8: Game dynamics & feedback loops | |
| 11 | Dev | Assignment 2: Breakout | Because it has an example of a positive feedback loop, introduced in Module 8. |
| 12 | Dev | Assignment 3: Match 3 | This project also has reasonably ambiguous assignment projects that it makes you think about the mechanics and what it does to the player’s experience (MDA Framework callback) |
| 13 | Design | Module 9: Interesting decisions | |
| 14 | Design | Module 10: Kinds of fun & player types | |
| 15 | Design | Module 11: Level design (PvE) | |
| 16 | Design | Module 12: Level design (PvP) | |
| 17 | Dev | Assignment 4: Super Mario | While Match 3 and breakout had “levels”, the conversations about level design make more sense when applied to a platform game like Mario. It talks about not being able to create levels until you know more about the mechanics, gravity, etc. This project has bugs that can make the game unfair to the player. It’s good to be able to verbalise that in the context of the previous modules. |
| 18 | Dev | Assignment 5: Legend of Zelda | This assignment introduces the concept of data driven design for entities in the game. |
| 19 | Dev | Assignment 6: Angry Birds | This one makes it pretty explicit that by separating out level data into a separate file in the same way we did for entities and game objects in the last assignment, you can use offload the design to a level designer who only needs to work on that one file. |
| 20 | Design | Module 13: UI-UX design | |
| 21 | Dev | Assignment 7: Pokemon | This project covers GUIs so it makes sense to do it after module 13 on UI-UX design. |
| 22 | Design | Module 14: Playtesting | |
| 23 | Assignment 8: Helicopter 3D | ||
| 24 | Design | Module 15: Game balance | This module talks about adjusting game mechanics to achieve balance, and then tuning – adjusting the numbers behind the scenes to see it’s affect on the gameplay. |
| 25 | Dev | Assignment 9: Dreadhalls | This project talks about exposing component properties in unity’s GUI so you can adjust values like mazeSize without going into the code. I believe this is a hint that you could do something similar with something you introduce as part of the assignment requirements. Esssentially so you can tune the game balance easily between each playtest. |
| 26 | Dev | Assignment 10: Portal | Introduces rapid prototyping tools in Unity with ProBuilder and Pro Grids. |
| 27 | Design | Module 16: Rapid prototyping | Goes into more detail of going from the initial game idea stage to that rapid prototyping stage. |
| 28 | Design | Module 17: Design documentation | It’s time to plan your final project idea, but how? |
| 29 | Design | Module 18: Rules writing | While this module is focused on writing rulesheets for board games, the concepts are important in video games. Does your game introduce the theme/objective up front? Does it introduce the mechanics/rules in a clear way? |
| 30 | Dev | Final Project | The final project assignment expects you to spend a decent amount of time writing good documentation to support the game, so completing design module 17 is a good precursor to this, and creating documentation like a vision statement should begin before you start coding the actual game. The design course also talks about how games are typically made – prototyping small chunks of the core gameplay before getting bogged down in level design, designing more enemies, powerups, weapons, etc. Understanding the value of rapid prototyping (Module 16) will put you on the right track when starting your final project. |
| 31 | Design | Module 19: Communication within teams | |
| 32 | Design | Module 20: Careers in game design |
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