Video Game Design

Offered By: Rochester Institute of Technology via edX

Course Description

Overview

Imagine what it would be like to turn your love of playing video games into a career. What skills would you need to become a successful video game designer, and what job opportunities could you pursue in the industry?

In this XSeries, those questions and more will be answered by Rochester Institute of Technology’s Game Design and Development faculty and the director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games at The Strong National Museum of Play. You will learn how various roles within the video game design discipline work together, helping you dive deeper into your area of interest and the career paths available.

RIT’s Game Design and Development program is ranked third in the Princeton Review’s “Top Schools for Video Game Design for 2016” and has been in the Top 10 for years. Students in the program are part of a vibrant and active new media community, building, sharing and learning all forms and shapes of games and new media. Students who have successfully completed the RIT program have been hired to work at some of the industry’s top employers, including Amazon Games, Apple, Bungie Studios, Blizzard Entertainment, EA Games, Epic Games, Google, Konami Gaming Inc., Microsoft, Rockstar Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Valve Corporation and Walt Disney Interactive.

Syllabus

Courses under this program:
Course 1: Video Game Design History

Learn about the evolution of video games from experts at The Strong National Museum of Play, the world's largest collection of video game materials.

Course 2: Video Game Design and Balance

Learn about the video game design process and experiment with effective methods for balancing a game's mechanics.

Course 3: Video Game Asset Creation and Process

Learn about the tools, processes and platforms that allow video game assets to be created and assembled into a commercial game.

Course 4: Video Game Design: Teamwork & Collaboration
Learn how a team comes together to create, market and deliver a video game.

Course 5: Gameplay Programming for Video Game Designers
Learn how to create the best gameplay by understanding algorithmic thinking in simple programming problems and applying it to game design.

Courses

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5 weeks, 1-3 hours a week, 1-3 hours a week
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Some video game designers are programmers in their own right, and may have even come from that background to a designer’s role. Others have a less formal background. All video game designers should have a solid understanding of what programmers can and cannot do, how assets interact with code, what algorithmic thinking is and how to take advantage of the capabilities of different engines and tools.
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5 weeks, 1-3 hours a week, 1-3 hours a week
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Modern video games are incredibly complex multimedia productions involving still and motion graphics, code, audio, interface elements, narrative elements and much more.

In this course, you will learn how and where all these pieces come from, who's in charge of each piece and the different stages of the game design process. We will also show you how everything is brought together to create a final product.
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5 weeks, 1-3 hours a week, 1-3 hours a week
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In this course, you'll enter the mind of a professional game designer. You'll learn how to design different types of games, understand the commonalities between them and learn what is at the core of every game design, including game balance and why it is key to game design.
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5 weeks, 1-3 hours a week, 1-3 hours a week
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Video games as a medium go back more than 50 years to mainframe computers. Even the central design of video games can be traced back to the first games themselves.

To be a good game designer, it's essential to have an understanding of the video game design industry's fascinating history.

We've partnered with The Strong National Museum of Play to give you a unique look into the history of all things video game. The International Center for the History of Electronic Games at The Strong is the largest and most comprehensive public assemblage of video games and related materials in the world. The staff are celebrated experts in the field and the ICHEG is visited by scholars of video games from around the world. You'll gain amazing insight into the history of video games with a guided exploration of key artifacts from the collection of more than 100,000 electronic games and materials.
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5 weeks, 1-3 hours a week, 1-3 hours a week
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Game designers work with a wide range of asset creators, programmers, producers, and others to bring a video game from concept to product.

In this course, you will learn about the different types of teams a game designer is a member of, both large and small.

You will also learn about the different roles of a development team and how game designers collaborate with others to successfully create and market a final product.

Taught by

Stephen Jacobs, Jon-Paul Dyson, Ian Schreiber, Sten McKinzie and Al Biles