Commercial Videogames Design & Development
- Design lectures: Mondays 12.15-14:15, Liivi 2-207
- Technology lectures: Thursdays 10.15-12:45, Liivi 2-207
- Questions: Edvin.Aedma ät gmail dot com
This course provides practical knowledge and some experience in designing and developing
commercial videogames. Lectures are split into two parts: game design on Mondays and game development technologies on Thursdays.
The first part of the course focuses on understanding game psychology and practicing how to design the key components of game design: game mechanics (environments, objects, rules), aestethics (visual, audible, tactile) and narrative; each of which are divided into further subcategories. Psychology of emotions, motivations and gameplay are at the core of the design lectures.
The second part (game development technologies) introduces various game engines, tools and approaches to game programming, giving an overview of the whole development process. Includes practical programming homework.
After the introductory phase, learners will form teams, each team working on game projects that are to be completed and publicly presented in the end of the course.
Most of the design assignments are creative or analytical in nature, (such as creative writing or game mechanics analysis) and all of the technology assignments involve (some) practical programming.
See also the Estonian Game Development club at http://gamedev.ut.ee