TU Wien:Gameful Design VU (Peter Purgathofer)

Daten

Lecturers	Peter Purgathofer
ECTS	6
Department	Visual Computing and Human-Centered Technology
When	summer semester
Language	English
Links	tiss:187A92

Zuordnungen

Master Media and Human-Centered Computing

Wahlmodul Gameful Design

Inhalt

This course teaches rapid-prototyping, creativity techniques and design methods by means of 1-3 weekly game-design and -protoyping challenges. Most built game-prototypes will be non-digital and several of them ‘serious games’.

Ablauf

The sign-up is physical at the institute (not in TISS).

There’s one game-design and -prototyping challenge between every two classroom-sessions. These are tackled in groups of 2-3 people. The groups switch around every session. Challenges could be e.g. (taken from SS15):

• Create a card-game
• Create a war(fare)-themed board-game – without using territory control as a mechanic; a challenge taken from “Challenges for Game Designers – non-digital exercises for video game designers” (2009) by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber.
• One digital ‘serious game’ thematizing surveillance
• One ‘serious game’ thematizing surveillance
• One alternate-reality, group-game (related to the 250 year jubilee of the TU)
• A game for audience-participation in musical events, presented as video sketch, i.e. a series of static images (plus some music) describing a scenario / showing how the game works.
• A game using a react-table-like device that had been borrowed to the IGW at the time.
• etc

The creative process (sketches, design decisions, rules/the final game, some game-play footage, etc) has to be documented on a blog (e.g. see here), and the game-prototypes are play-tested and discussed in the classroom sessions.

The classroom-sessions also contain lectures on various creativity techniques and discussions

Benötigte/Empfehlenswerte Vorkenntnisse

None required. Previous design experience, e.g. from the bachelor curriculum courses is highly recommended, though.

Additionally, basic arts and crafts skills for the physical games can be helpful, as well as experience in the use of game engines for the digital ones. Otherwise, creativity techniques as well as previous experience with rapid prototyping and design can come in handy.

Vortrag

Easy to follow and very interactive, as all lectures by Peter Purgathofer tend to be.

Depending on the challenges, some lectures might be given by other people.

Übungen

The game-design/-prototyping challenges every 1-3 weeks in groups of 2-3, described above.

Prüfung, Benotung

There’s no exam – the grade dependes on the practical work and is very lenient (as the organizer accepts the rather subjective nature of the thing).

Dauer der Zeugnisausstellung

Roughly a month in SS15.

Zeitaufwand

It’s a lot of work, even for the 6 ECTS one gets. You need to make sure, to only prototype the one, essential core idea you want want to test and nothing more, otherwise the workload will crush you. Due to these tight time-constraints, the course effectively teaches to do rapid-prototyping.

Unterlagen

noch offen

Tipps

As layed out in “Zeitaufwand” above, make sure you keep your prototypes very minimal / limited to the one core idea you want to test.

Keep a sketchbook and always keep it at hand. Some of the best ideas come while doing other things, e.g. riding public transport, showering, shortly before falling asleep, etc.

Verbesserungsvorschläge / Kritik

Due to the time constraints, the frequent prototyping and the non-stereotypical and design-wise more daring games, that the challenges resulted in, I found this course more educative and interesting than the “VU/PR Game Design”. (pheara)

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