Innovative Techniques and Technologies for Teaching Games Design Andrew Williams, Brian Morris, Phil Carlisle

What we did…  Considered innovative (for us) approaches to tackling a new course Blogging  Maybe useful to everyone (esp PDP)  “Robot Battle” Probably only useful to us!  Some success and some things we can still improve

Our backgrounds  Andrew Williams Lecturer for 13 years, teaching technical computing  Brian Morris Police officer, BSc in 2002, PGCE in 2004, lecturer for 3 years  Phil Carlisle Games industry for 20 years, lecturer since October 2003

Our “portfolio” (1)  Computer Games Software Development (games programming) Highly technical Includes both maths and physics Extremely complex programming  Introduced in September 2002  In our “comfort zone”  Very poor completion rate Many entrants don’t understand what they’re getting into

Our “portfolio” (2)  Games Design Less technical Not “design” as in “art and design”  Interaction design  Way outside our “comfort zone”  Introduced in September 2005 In part because of the failure rate on CGSD

What does a game designer do?  Project Zero (aka Fatal Frame) on the left and Baldur’s Gate on the right, both for the PS2:

Our problems  Our main difficulty on CGSD is with motivation Students think that because they like to play games, they will want to make games  Making games is hard  … and it’s often no fun at all! Our weaker CGSD students hardly ever work outside of class

Our problems (continued)  How should three “techies” teach games design? Important not to create “CGSD-lite” Had to consult game designers Had to learn from more creative courses (Important to get CGSD “refugees” on the right track as soon as possible) Got to get out of our “comfort zone”

Our problems (continued)  How does a student know that she has a good design? We could tell them, but what’s the point?  No real problem with programming Either it works or it doesn’t!  Reflection is most important This fits nicely with the PDP, which we were also thinking about at the time…

Step 1: Talk to game designers  We have good contacts  BECTA project Interviewed game designers from five development studios Trying to identify what they do to encourage motivation and engagement in their games Very useful intelligence for our new course!

Game designer characteristics  Game designers are not nerds Communication is hugely important:  Communicate with artists  Communicate with programmers  Communicate with audio musicians  Communicate with producers  Communicate with publishers  Communicate with players/fans One designer said he does more writing than anything else Game designers talk a lot too!

Step 2: Think hard about classes  How could we encourage reflection?  How could we encourage creativity?  How could we get our students to work outside of class?  How could we get our students to communicate?  How could we get our students to become more confident?

What we planned  Timetable setup: One hour lecture/demo on Monday or Tuesday Open access session on Weds or Thurs One or two hour critique session on Friday  Students told in the first class to prepare something for the critique on Friday  Critiques done “on the whiteboard” so the whole class can watch!

GAD1003 – Games Reviewing  Students required to create a blog Short for weblog, an online journal which is regularly updated The blog was created in-class on week one Blogging on commercial servers!  Thereafter, weekly entries were required Most entries were short reviews (c300 words) of games Some entries reflection on progress etc

GAD1003 Games Reviewing  GAD1003 is more about how to write properly than about reviewing games  Games reviews used to supply motivation  Fifteen out of nineteen passed the course The other four had all given up long before the end for one reason or another Therefore, all the students who participated throughout passed the module

GAD1003 Games Reviewing  What went right: Students did a lot of work Blogging was accepted by all the students Students now used to being critiqued in public Students in general enjoyed the critiques  (With the possible exception of one student) Students' writing generally improved Students have an online portfolio (sort of!)

GAD1003 – Games Reviewing  What went wrong: Students hated critiquing other students' work  Felt that they didn't have the skills Should have spent more time doing crits in Friday sessions  Students were actually enjoying crits, while I thought they didn't like them much They enjoyed their own crits, not other students' Maybe best to do crits individually, but...

GAD1003 – Games Reviewing  What went wrong (continued) Marking load was high (hard to keep up) Range of games in labs was limited Reflection is hard to encourage if marks are attached  When I tried, I got lots of comments about how nice the teacher was!! Didn't encourage students to read each other's blogs – a major error, I think

GAD1003 – Games Reviewing  Conclusions: Blogging was a complete success  The easiest success I'll ever have in teaching  I recommend it for any first year module where you want students to work regularly Perhaps blogging works because it breaks up the students' perceptions about the nature of university work?  It is their blog, not ours!

GAD1003 – Games Reviewing  For the course as we studied it in , please see: and follow the link to Games Reviewing

GAD1000 – Games Scripting  “Scripting”, in this context, means programming within a game Somewhat like programming, only simpler  Scripting is becoming more common as a task for a game designer It is hard to find good programmers Providing scripting tools for designers to use means you need fewer programmers...

GAD1000 – Games Scripting  The problem with scripting  Scripting is hard, and to do anything useful can be very hard indeed  Many of our games design students have already discovered that they don't like programming As far as they can see, programming and scripting are (more or less) the same thing

GAD1000 – Games Scripting  How to approach Games Scripting  Need a visual approach It's easier It's more like what a designer would do  Need a motivational “hook” Scripting is easier than programming But need something to push students to try harder when the going gets tough

GAD1000 – Games Scripting  Robot Battle Highly visual Easy to program Tournament system  Students were required to program robots to fight against robots programmed by their peers The competition between students provided the necessary motivation

GAD1000 – Games Scripting  A proportion of the students' marks were awarded for how they did in the competition  Students were able to refine their robots over a period of weeks, improving them based on previous competitions  Two competitions: individual and team

GAD1000 – Games Scripting  What went right: Students were motivated, especially once the competitions started Even weaker students made progress Most students who made an effort passed the course The robot battles, displayed on the big screen, were highly entertaining

GAD1000 – Games Scripting  What went wrong: Perhaps too long before the first competition  Some students “coasted” until the first battles One student plagiarised his group's work

GAD1000 – Games Scripting  Conclusions An excellent result, in a module which was a potential minefield for many of our students Maybe not so much use outside of the CET department?  Maybe business games? Extremely useful on the games courses and has been used in two other modules, one at Level 2 and one at Level 3