Class 05 – Design workshop 1

Workshop

• Conceptualization
• Paper prototyping

Preparation

Divide the class into 6 groups. Each group will have 6 to 7 members. Each member jot down a memorable event in the last few weeks. The event can be viewing experience of a film, TV program, comic, book, or dining, new year activity, dating, etc. We are going to discuss the gaming elements of the event for the game design workshop. Each student use only one sentence to describe your event. A typical sentence should include a subject, one or more verbs, an object, and optional adjective, adverb.

Activities

• Exquisite Corpse exercise with words taken from the preparation phase. Identify the best sentence from each group.
• Mind map exercise with the identified sentence from last phase.
• Generate game ideas from the mind map with focus on the formal elements of game.

Formal elements of a game

• Players
• Objectives
• Procedures
• Rules
• Resources
• Conflict
• Boundaries
• Outcome

Points you can consider

• Define each player’s goal.
• What does a player need to do to win?
• What is the single most important type of action in the game?
• Describe how this functions.
• Outline the procedures and rules.
• Focus on the most critical rules. Leave other rules until later.
• Map out how a typical turn works.
• How many players can play the game?
• How do the players interact with each other?

Reference