Lessons in Teaching Game Design
Anne Sullivan, Gillian Smith. Lessons in Teaching Game Design. Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2011),Bordeaux, France, June 29 -July 1, 2011.
In this paper, we describe a video game design and programming class offered as part of the California Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS) program at University of California, Santa Cruz. The authors have co-taught this class for four years, and have had an opportunity to iteratively explore a number of approaches in teaching the class. The course has evolved a great deal over the last four years; this paper presents a post-mortem of the program so far, describes our different approaches, and provides insight into the game design process for students.