Experience in the Game Design Seminar

Introduction In UC Santa Cruz’s first ever offering of a Game Design Seminar, I had the involving experience of developing four games from scratch, participating in discussions relevant to the times, and developing my skill in computer game design. This paper documents my thinking, efforts, and analysis of mine and other’s games developed for the seminar. In the first section, I will briefly discuss the mechanics of the seminar. In the second, I will describe a model for the analysis of games that I developed the quarter before this seminar. Next, in the third, I will take an in-depth look at my own games, analyzing them under my game model, and discussing their strengths and weaknesses. In the fourth section I will apply the same analysis to a sampling of games written by other students. Finally, I will look at the effectiveness of the themes provided in the seminar as a guide for game design and some alternative phrasings of the given themes that expressed themselves in the games developed this quarter.