OBJECTIVES
What we call a videogame is not a product. It's the creation of an author and her accomplice, the player; it is handmade by the former and personally distributed to the latter. The videogame is a zine. -- Anna Anthropy, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters
Schedule | Description | Objectives | Assignments | Assessment | Policies | Contact
By the conclusion of this course, you should learn to:
- Iteratively develop, revise, share, discuss, and formally present an indie game protoype,
- Prototype an indie game that makes an argument about culture,
- Combine critical thinking about power, systems, and social relations with basic technical competencies in computing and materials design,
- Approach indie games as social systems (not bundles of unrelated component parts), and
- Demonstrate an awareness of various strategies used by practitioners to prototype games with social justice issues in mind.
Student work will be evaluated based on a gaming "manual" (three marks), a presentation (one mark), and a prototype (one mark). Please note: this course is an introduction to game development and game studies. By the semester's end, students are not expected to be experts in game-making, and they are also not expected to build a complete game.