I would love to see a course that dives into the practice of designing games. Maybe something covering topics like affordances, interaction, and ‘gamefeel’. I’d love to dig into some of the headier concepts with your practical, project based approach to teaching. I did a game with a team for this past Ludum Dare. Our game has gotten tons of ratings and overall really great feedback, praise specifically for the art, sound and direction. But we had just as many people complain about our controls feeling unintuitive and some of our level design feeling flat. I did the Weekly Game Jam this week, this time solo, and once again received praise for art, sound, and direction. And once again a complaint that the controls were unintuitive.
It’s easy for people to assume that they are good ‘game designers’ because design is typically considered a soft skill, and most people can profess to have it. I always thought programming, making art and music would be the difficult part of making games. Turns out I got just good enough at development that I was prolific enough to realize I was a lackluster designer.
I know it’s a huge, largely subjective, topic to study. I’d say it’d be infinitely more so to teach. But maybe just a design 101 course that maybe teaches how to approach design with the right mindset and put together the right set of tools. I don’t have a clue, but all of my design decisions are made by the seat of my pants, largely at random, and with no knowledge or experience backing them up. I just feel like there has to be a better way.
