GMD 6020 Game Design and Analysis

Game Design and Analysis provides the core skills necessary to design and implement game mechanics, game play structures, reward/achievement and currency systems, campaign design, and incorporate the "Fun" elements. The design portion of the course revolves around the analysis of paper based created games through play testing. Those games are then related to the design of an actual screen-based game. Trends and patterns of games, historical models of games, and play testing approaches will also be utilized throughout the course. During the analysis phase, students will discuss and explore debugging approaches and play testing techniques for finding areas of improvement, user issues, error handling, and use cases. Takeaways from this course will be a game design process that could be used to enhance classroom engagement, improve comprehension of topics, and better students' educational performance. The skills learned could also be applied to the consumer market, employee training, and entertainment. This course provides a good foundation for educators looking to use STEM in the classroom.