Game Design Curriculum

Re:Game Design Curriculum by Jugurtha on Saturday August 29, 2020 @02:15AM (#24314037)

Can you give a few examples of some products that get this right? Not just in terms of what's commonly referred to as "gamification", and not talking about badges and things that dance around, but a deeper, less obvious, more subtle and refined connection with to that analogy?

I remember I liked a game and I started writing code to play it for me so I could do other things while still having the feeling that an extension of myself was playing.

As a side note, the company had one of the coolest recruiting tactics. I had to examine HTTP responses to be able to send in requests that triggered actions, and they included a call to application in the HTTP response headers "If you're reading this, please apply".

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Re:Game Design Curriculum by seangp on Saturday August 29, 2020 @02:24AM (#24314082)

My company was asked to make some health and safety induction software. Visitors to the client company would have to self complete the induction process in the reception area whilst waiting for their host to collect them. Client wanted us to present 38 slides worth of information and have them ‘acknowledge’ each point. Instead of doing this we turned it into a game whereby the user has to explore a simplified 3D version of the building and identify the health and safety risks themselves. Graphics were well designed, it had elements of humour and it worked. Our analytics showed that 94% of people who started interacting with the software completed the entire induction process.

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Re:Game Design Curriculum by Jugurtha on Tuesday September 01, 2020 @04:17PM (#24346515)

Could you write more about this? What have you used to develop that game? Was it the core competency of your team? I'm wondering because the client did not expect to receive a game, so didn't come to you for the game-dev ability. Am I wrong? I'd love to know more.

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Re:Game Design Curriculum by munificent on Monday August 31, 2020 @01:12PM (#24333568)

> Can you give a few examples of some products that get this right?

The latest one for me is Ableton Live. It is just a beautiful piece of software. Everything feels smooth, immediate, expressive. It gets out of my way whenever it can but is right there at my fingertips when I want it to be. It's just a lovely, lovely program.

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Re:Game Design Curriculum by Jugurtha on Tuesday September 01, 2020 @04:35PM (#24346756)

Nice! You probably know of this link "Get started making music"[0] and I found it pretty cool.

What do you think of "The Sims Game Design Documents"[1]? Could you recommend other similar resources?

I guess what really strikes a chord with me is the arc, not only "in" the game, but of the journey to make the game. One book I enjoyed on an emotional level was "The Making of Prince of Persia"[2] by Jordan Mechner. I also enjoyed "Masters of Doom"[3] by David Kushner, but more on the merit of good research, which I really respect. I don't want a montage, I want the story with the suffering and tribulations.

Do you know of similar content?

[0]: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/

[1]: https://donhopkins.com/home/TheSimsDesignDocuments/

[2]: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Prince-Persia-Journals-1985-19...

[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...

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