Explore the essential process of game design, covering structures, techniques, and misconceptions to help you create engaging video and tabletop games.
This course dives into the essentials of game design for both video and tabletop games. It focuses on the process, common misconceptions, and practical tips to help you complete games instead of just dreaming about them. It's all about getting your ideas off the ground!
The process of specifying and modifying the way the game plays: not programming, art, marketing, licensing, sound, etc.
[Note: This course exists because my original course "Learning Game Design: as a job or a hobby" more than doubled in size over time, becoming much too large for Udemy's new structure. That massive course is no longer available, instead there is "Learning Game Design" parts 1 and 2. As with that original course, this one is not subject to massive discounts, which only serve to offend those who paid full or near-full price.]
This pair of "Learning Game Design" courses (this is Part 2) is designed for people who want to design games - video or tabletop - but lack information about what is really involved and how to go about it. It's not rocket science, but commercial design is a JOB - one that cannot be done by rote, there is no "Easy Button". I'm not here to encourage you, or entice you, or entertain you, I'm here to inform you. I assume you have the motivation to learn how to design games, you just need to know how. And that means you need to do it from start to finish, to complete games rather than merely start them. We'll discuss the process of game design, the possible structures in games, the best way to start learning game design, what makes a game good (there's a great variety of opinion about this), ways to provide a framework for your design efforts, ways to keep records of your work, software to help you learn. Many aspiring game designers have crippling misconceptions (such as the notion that it's all about a great idea, or that everyone likes the same games they do), and I'll try to clear those out of your way. This is not a "comprehensive" series because there's no such thing. It is a pair of courses about learning game design. Learning is a process that goes on throughout a game designer's career, and it starts here.
This class will never be offered for free or at very deep discounts. That is disrespectful to me and to the students who pay full price or near it.
Keep in mind, this course is not about game development, that is, not about programming, art, sound, and so forth. It is only about game design.Most so-called "game design" courses are actually about game development, with just a little game design involved.
Following are comments from people who took the original course "Learning Game Design: as a job or a hobby":
Great course! Good for the starter like myself :)
Currently I follow this course (at 75% so far) and its a great course for beginner game designers like myself. The course is not a 1 click button and after your a game designer no (please send message if you found that course btw) but it gives a good frame work, hand outs, ideas and background about both video games and tabletop games.
So if you wanted to start with game design this is a great first step.
The teacher is clear and good to follow ( I am a student from The Netherlands and got no problem following this course). Also the course got some assignment I strongly recommend doing them I finaly found out why I Hate Monopoly :)
Cheers all hope this was usefull,
Jimmy
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Mark Frazier
President
Designs In Creative Entertainment, LLC.
An ideal introduction to game design
Dr. Pulsipher distills the critical elements of designing games into manageable chunks. This is an ideal course to take if you are interested in designing games, regardless of whether you intend to pursue it as a career or not.
Much of the material covers the specifics of the process of game design, but there is alot of prime advice to be had in the lectures on creating the right conditions for quality feedback and on understanding the realities of the publishing business.
A must-have certification if you're serious about designing, and I'd say, even publishing games!
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Pull Back the Curtain on the Game Design Process
I know that in the past there's only been a couple of times that I managed to blunder into some sort of prototype, but I had no clue as to what I was doing that was different than usual. Well... the material in this course nails down precisely what to do to get over that initial hump. It can save you from countless false starts and dumb ideas. And unlike other commentary on the design process, Dr. Pulsipher provides a whole menu of things that you can do in each phase of development.
This material reveals more of the dials and knobs of gaming than I even knew existed. And being aware of these things was enough to shift me from having an occasional promising idea to having more ideas than I know what to do with. Even just playing new games now, I cannot help but see "behind the curtain" and into the dilemmas the designers were facing. If you care about game design and actually do the work that this course entails, you are in for a profoundly illuminating experience.
Improve your success playing multi-sided conflict games
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Dr. Lewis Pulsipher (Wikipedia: "Lewis Pulsipher"; "Britannia (board game)"; "Archomental" ) is the designer of approaching a dozen commercially published boardgames. His game "Britannia" is described in an Armchair General review "as one of the great titles in the world of games." Britannia was also one of the 100 games highlighted in the book "Hobby Games: the 100 Best". He...
Having loved Part 1 of this course, and it pains me to say this, I found Part 2 kind of a slog to get through. Almost the entire first half of this course was covered in Part 1 and the most interesting section, about playtesting, is kind of breezed through here. I'm assuming that's because there is another course specifically dealing with playtesting but I was hoping to get that info here, not to have to pay for yet another course. Parts 1 and 2 could easily be combined into one course and the course about playtesting could have been Part 2. My recommendation is to take Part 1, skip this course and get a copy of his book instead which contains most of the same information without a lot of repeating. I still like Dr. P and I find him engaging but I feel like this could have been constructed better, especially after learning so much in Part 1.
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Mike A.
This is the second part of a what was originally a very large single course on Learning Game Design that got broken into two pieces. Some of the videos mention the original larger course, and there might be some confusion at times because of that. Ideally you should take both of these courses in order, but you can skip around bit if you want to focus on particular topics, but you get the most out of it by doing it in order. If you are totally new to the idea of doing game design, I would suggest starting with Dr. Pulsipher's more introductory course: Brief Introduction To Game Design. There is occasional repetition across some of Dr. Pulsipher's eleven courses, but for the most part each course has plenty of new content. Note that all of his courses have coupon codes on his own website (just Google pulsiphergames) ... and a couple of his courses are completely free this way!
Why should you take this course (these courses)? Well, the main reason is that Dr. Pulsipher is an experienced game designer that has a wealth of real-world experience and knowledge to share. Some of his game credits include Britannia, Valley of the Four Winds, Dragon Rage, and Sea Kings -- with a couple more hopefully coming out this year. Dr. P is not an entertainer ... he is an educator. So don't expect fanfare, rah-rah-rah, fancy animations, gimmicky presentations, or promises of how to get rich quick by designing games. He will tell you about success stories in the industry like Reiner Knizia, but that you have a greater chance of winning the lottery than being the next Reiner Knizia. Don't be put off by these cold hard facts ... Dr. Pulsipher tells you ... do game design because you love it, not because you have a pipe dream that you might get rich. Do it because you love it! (Dr. P actually has an entire course called the Joys of Game Design.) So if you want to learn about the nuts and bolts of the actual process of game design, take these courses. Ask questions within the course Q&A section ... he actually answers! To supplement the courses you can read his book, watch his Game Design channel on YouTube, and take advantage of the wealth of knowledge & experience that he has to offer. I have finished nine of his eleven courses so far, and I look forward to any additional courses he may publish in the future.