Casey O'Donnell
You have a great idea for a game. Turning that idea into a reality isn’t just about knowing the tools. In this course you will practice moving from game concept through design documentation, prototyping and testing. Numerous elements go into the overall process of game design. These range from topics such as idea generation, story, character, and game world development, game mechanics and level design, and user experience design. You will explore the process for designing meaningful experiences for your players. At the end of the course learners will have produced a game’s high concept document, one page blueprint, a physical prototype, pitch and supporting design documentation to move from an idea in your head to a fleshed out design, ready for implementation. Michigan State University has been advancing the common good with uncommon will for more than 150 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU pushes the boundaries of discovery and forges enduring partnerships to solve the most pressing global challenges while providing life–changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree–granting colleges.
Instructor Details
Courses : 1
Specification: Principles of Game Design
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50 reviews for Principles of Game Design
Add a review
| Price | Free |
|---|---|
| Provider | |
| Duration | 18 hours |
| Year | 2015 |
| Language | English |
| Certificate | Yes |
| Quizzes | Yes |
Khushboo J –
It was really good experience. The most challenging time was when they give you unexpected and big assignments and you get perplexed how to do them. Teacher was really cool and overall the course was very informative about all the basics of game designing.
Rohit S –
As been curious for Game Development I never knew the theoretical side of Game Design and how important it is in order to be a Game Developer Second and Game Designer first
Stefan H –
Extremely disappointing, nothing I could use in any practical way.
vikramaditya g –
Theoretical par..boring
Isaac E L P –
Excellent and fundamental learning for becoming a Game designer. I’s what gives shape to the ideas to become a complete game. Very recommendable!
Henrik L S –
The course covers a lot of topics within the field of game design. It is broad and doesn’t go very in each topic, but provides additional material and relevant links for those who wish to delve deeper.
Shashwat K –
good course
Ali A K G –
Nice course for a beginner game designer. Highly recommend it.
Tarek E –
Good content for the basics of Game Design, but the course lacks good graded materials.
Jordao B –
It has a good structure of teaching, but it is not supported and in several moments it is necessary to look in the forum to advance. I recommend if you do not have difficulty with this.
V.B.Srevarshan –
This course taught more than just the principles of game design. I enjoyed working on assignments like story bibles and GDD. Though the content is a bit dry, I suggest you pay good attention to what the instructor says in the videos. My favorite part in the entire course is “Social Issues for designers” where the instructor talks about the current state of games.
Mohamed O E –
Great Over View about game design for starter
Anirudh C –
Insightful and enthralling! I learned game design in an orderly fashion along with dos and donts. Very useful.
Gorkem B –
It is very detailed. a full course on game design.
Alex A –
Feels dead – not too much mentor/admin activity. Also, difficult course to rely solely on peer feedback, as it’s all highly subjective. Overall I had a great fun time further flushing out my ideas and learning how to transform them into working prototypes; however, being siloed to feedback from a few “low–quality” peer reviewers is eroding my experience, it would be better if Coursera/this course could ensure a diversity of peer reviewers. Right now it feels like I’m being trolled vs. receiving actionable feedback to improve.
andra~ g –
Somewhere between the corse the lectures are mixed up. That means that you first have the questions then in the next part of the week there is a reading and explanation. This was kinda confusing.
Duy N –
hghg
Yunxiang L –
I do not want to be so offensive, but I hold the opinion that this course is useless at all. I will give up my ambition to accomplish the Game Design and Development Specialization after studying half of this course. First of all, the course itself has a lot of problems. Videos presented by professor, quiz for each small unit and the final assignment for the week, these things have little relevance. Actually I can just complete the quiz without watching videos at all. Secondly, the assignment workload for each week is not reasonable.For instance, you may write a high concept document in week one and come out with a game prototype in week four, but you cannot complete a game design document in only one week! It is impossible even for native speakers and for most people who study in Coursera we do not just have to learn from Coursera! We may have jobs or we need to seek for a job or we just to study other lessons in campus, we can not just spend one week on this ambiguous course. Furthermore, the peer review criteria is totally ridiculous! You have only three grades to give others, 1 for accomplish the purpose , 3 for beyond the basic demand and 5 for doing some epic work. The most ridiculous thing is that we should give 1,3,5 points for one demand which is called “Does this assignment is in PDF HTML or TEXT form?” . How to let just uploading files to be “beyond” or “epic”? To cut the long story short, only people with mature game ideas or only for people who are already act as game designers can fulfill this course successfully but I do not think they need an introductory level course to improve themselves at all.
Dmytro N –
For me, the course was too general, basically an overview saying you can make game ideas out of nothing; however, it’s going to be hard to bring them to life. I would enjoy the course much more if it would provide more practical examples of prototyping without code on different engines, provide more details about free–to–play monetisation and game design principles, etc.
Kristopher C T –
Great framework for game design. Got me focusing on a lot of things that I hadn’t considered previously. I originally felt it started kind of slow, but that is how any idea starts. It needs to go through all of the steps necessary to make it a reality and Casey O’Donnell is great at teaching the process. Recommended
Sildo N G N –
G.R.E.A.T!
Animesh S B –
It was a great experience to realize that game development was much more than coding, designing and audio mixing.
Pavel K –
The main problem of this course is inadequate assessment of student work. No matter how well the work is done, the student cannot point out errors about which he himself admits. I am absolutely not sure that my game documents are not pieces of garbage. Well, if Casey had learned to use the word “rigt” less often, it would have sounded much more convincing. Trying to calculate how many times for the course he uses it stopped at 300. I would recommend adding more links to the GDC videos. But do not forget about the pros. I never thought that I could write so much. A very important skill in expressing your own thoughts through writing. Explaining your idea to others was quite simple. Make it all in the form of a document – not. Thank you for that.
Benhur O J –
Pretty poor course. The lectures are incomplete. Most of the learning process is left for the assignments. Finally, the scoring system for the assignments is very subjective leading to unfair evaluation. Please revise this course because it is a pity so low quality while first course is so good.
Pablo F S –
Otimos insights e profundo conteudo teorico sobre o que faz um jogo ser bom. Ajudou muito no meu processo criativo.
Marvin O S –
The lectures are good and the instructor is clealy competent in Game Design. However, I feel that lectures are sometimes not straight to the point and tests contain questions, which are partially really tricky to answer. Furthermore, I disagree with the evaluation attribute “epic”. I do not think that a small course project would ever be epic, nor do I think that this should be required. I believe that “feasible” would per already complex enough to achieve……
Mohammed S –
nicely designed course. the instructor is excellent in explain in details.
Pan S T –
This course while provides good theoretical and supplementary information and theoretical knowledge on how to include mechanics and design a game using design documents and prototypes, I personally feel that some of the technical skill gaps should be accounted for via taking another course – Game Development for Modern Systems – first before taking the Game Design course. There’s an assignment that required to produce a prototype, and the Introduction to Game Development course covers very specific recipes using the Unity 3D game engine. This knowledge and skill information are not sufficient to help the developer–in–training to self–develop, translating the specific mechanics the person has in–mind into a self–sufficient developed prototype. It would be great if a separate course or project module were to provide sufficient sandbox–ing and experimental ground to be flex their creativity onto their programming skills, and use that as a springboard onto the prototype game submission. Overall, this course does cover sufficient ground for students to be curious enough to explore different game genres and learn the creative process behind such developments.
Fernando A G D –
great course… thanks fot everything
sri s a r –
this course started me thinking individually and i learned from this course very much and it is more useful for every gamer or game design member
Mikolaj G –
learnt a lot reeeeeeeeeeeee
Keith S I –
Very informative course really enjoyed. Help me get a bit more direction as an aspiring game designer.
mahmoud o a s –
no more practical assignment
Miguel A D –
thank u professor casey I learned a lot sadly I haven’t finished the whole 5 courses I’d like to continue and finish it for my portfolio. thank you for taking the effort on making the course 🙂
Artem –
BOOM!
Luis M B G –
This course taught me to think about and approach games in a different way. I’m now more observant about the world around me and how a “silly” or “normal” activity can become an interesting element for gameplay. Highly recommended for anyone who is willing to take games and game making seriously.
Ramy D –
Great course, I suggest that the final assignment should be restricted to Digital prototypes because while I was assessing one of the assignments I saw people submitting wrong assignments that has nothing to do with prototypes.
Nuno P –
Fun introductory course
Kareem A H –
4/5 cz its a little booring :3
Joao S –
Good course which has provided a good awareness how the gaming implementation work.
Christina K –
Amazing. It gives me so much ideas
Aditya N –
I have never seen such an interactive and interesting course ever! Must take for everyone, no matter what is your background.
Chioma E –
Great course, very practical!
Pavilonis E –
Hi Coursera fans! I highly recommend that course to everyone who just think or start career in gamedev. Not only for Project leaders, but for developers or 3D artist. Simple, clear, wise Casey O’Donnell. Thanks, I enjoy every moment!
Andrea P –
Great course
Zhang Y –
This course is great for beginner! The materials is good.
Pradyumn K P –
This course increased my motive of working in the game industry!
Tiago A N d S –
Outdated material and it’s hard to keep with the trainer.
Elham P G –
I learned a lot from this module but I must say theory is not my thing!
Mete G –
Unfortunately, the course isn’t very good. The subjects are told in a very abstract way. So, you are having a really hard time while doing the assignments. The instructor just keeps asking questions after questions without really teaching anything and he always says “Right?” at the end of every sentence which becomes really annoying after a while. Instead of focusing what he tells, you concantrate to hear if he is gonna say “Right?” again or not at the end of the sentence. AND HE SAYS. HE SAYS “RIGHT?” AT THE END OF EVERY SENTENCE. It’s unbelieveable.