I saw my class as a game design problem. Players want to climb the boundary cliff they're not supposed to climb instead of running the ball to score a touchdown; likewise, students wants to construct a game-crashing, impossibly tall, anatomically suggestive structure instead of wondering why that's such a terrible idea. As a designer, you could put a fence on top of that cliff to communicate that's not an option - or somehow remove the ability to jump around in the first place.
The joys of 3-D construction and world creation weren't exactly the focus of this course anyway. Worse, they seemed to be getting in the way of analyzing and practicing design. So I removed the pesky distraction of 3-D graphics and went back to the basics.
Starting from Scratch
This semester, I began running an "outdoor game design" course. Instead of huddling together in a computer lab, students collaborate in small groups, designing games to be played outside on the UC Berkeley campus. The games often feature diverse mechanics: blending in with crowds to deliver secret documents, swapping cards to become the richest divorcee, running back and forth to dodge a zombie gauntlet, etc.
And now, simply put, sometimes I can't get the students to shut up. Each week offers a new debate as students propose new rules and insist that we remove others. With new games come new arguments and discussions: Is it cheating if you pass the secret documents to a stranger? Why is the "hopping on one foot" rule so genius? Should the octopus wait five seconds or 10 seconds?
Now the students are actually thinking; now they're critically analyzing game design and engaging one another, unlike in the Counter-Strike level design course. Here's why:
Higher-order thinking. The change in scope, from level design to game design, actually challenges students' assumptions. I found that seasoned Counter-Strike players already had their own conception of the game and were ambivalent about adopting a more critical design vocabulary.
Logistics and class pacing. With the larger shift to game design, a semester-long workshop in digital games quickly becomes impractical, since it encouraged an emphasis on graphics and an arms race for visual fidelity rather than critical game design experimentation.
Graphics only confused students, convincing them they had to simulate the world in some realistic way - by building a (somewhat) recognizable pirate ship, for example, rather than focusing on how the players navigate that pirate ship - and without the distraction of having to virtualize real-life locations, students focus directly on analysis and criticism.
Playing outside is more teachable. When a Counter-Strike level is poorly designed, the core mechanics of the first-person shooter genre act as a safety net to create new mini-games: dueling with knives, trying to jump off the cliff first, etc. Faced with something we all recognize as simply awful, players improvise, spontaneously creating their own type of fun in place of team-oriented bomb defusing.
