Basic Game Design
The purpose of this exercise is to define major elements of your educational game.
You must take into account different "player types."
You do not need to have a "perfect" game. The purpose of this
document is to describe the game well and describe how your knowledge of the
elements of game design in this course were used to influence the design of your game.
Most answers, especially those in the middle, should be several paragraphs, not just
a few sentences. By the time I finish reading the document, I should be able to have full picture of what your game actually is. In addition, you need to fully articulate how your game design satisfies the game design principles of this course. This is not a short document.
This document needs to illustrate that you have put substantial thought into how
to make an engaging game for your educational content. Specifically, any
quiz-style games, memory-style games, or other simplistic games will not be
acceptable for a passing grade.
Formatting
11-pt Times New Roman, 1.25 or 1.5 line spacing
Revised Milestone 1
(user definitions and learning trajectories)
You will begin with your revised learning content document that you already turned
in and got returned. Make any revisions that you or I have decided should be made.
Then add this content to the end of it.
Game Design - Mechanics and Premise, narrative, etc.
(at least 1 page, probably 2 pages)
Assume that you still have a full design team. Do not use the 10-week time
constraint and 2-person implementation team resource constraint affect your
design. Design without such constraints.
First summarize the game type, placing it into a genre. What is a well-known
game that most closely resembles your game? And what are the major differences
between yours and that game?
High-level premise - in one sentence, what is the premise of the game? What character is the player, and what is their ultimate goal? What are some of their intermediate outcomes to that goal? This is all answered from the player's perspective - what are different actions they are taking to get themselves towards their goal (not from a game mechanics perspective but from a fictional action perspective).
What are the game mechanics? What types of in-game actions can the player make? Do they navigate
in a 2-d space, with a platformer? If there are different mini-games, describe each mini-game.
This should include not only basic game play, but also additional complexities ("bells and whistles")
put into the game that
are justified by motivational theory and learning theory.
Game Design - Justifying design decisions
(at least 1 page, probably more than 2 pages) This section need not be organized exactly as described below, but you need to include all of the elements, and you need to use organization (subheaders, bold, italics) to make it clear when you are discussing the different parts.
Describe how the motivation theories and learning theories justify the decisions described above in the "bells and whistles" of your game play (beyond the basic gameplay). Explicitly tie the theories to the design, including goals, rewards, and feedback.
Describe how different "player types" will find something that engages them.
Describe how your game premise, characters, etc. are appealing to the
mythical users that you created last project, and how you took their
interests / knowledge into account as you designed the game
Game Design - Increasing complexity
(approximately 1 page)
Describe how your game makes the user progress through the different elements
in the learning trajectory you produced. How do you teach different elements
and how do you gradually increase the difficulty and/or complexity as users
progress through the levels?
You are not expected to integrate design for cultures or learning
disabilities at this time - that will be in the next milestone.