Evidence of Flow

The online game design course I mentioned a while back has begun. It is hosted and taught by SCAD game design professor Ian Schreiber. It follows the book Challenges for Game Designers, which he co-wrote with Brenda Brathwaite. So far it has been fairly straight forward with nothing too surprising. Essentially it has consisted of an introduction to the concepts of game design and a definition of the scope of the course to system design.

There have already been some good points to think over. For example, in the most recent class he shows the parallels between the scientific method and iterative game design. That’s something that could fuel a whole discussion by itself. Would letting my son tinker with the new icon-based game creation kit Kodu actually assist in exposing him to the scientific method? Could such a device create a fun way for teachers to impress upon kids the benefits of scientific thinking over the rote memorization that occurs in most science classes?

What I’m really looking forward to are the pen and paper prototype exercises and the feedback from the professor and fellow students. My personal goal is to end up with a more solid method for prototyping and design that I can use in the future. I’ll be writing follow-up posts as I get further into the course.

-Seth