CS 4803B: Class Overview

Game Genres (1/12):

JC Herz's categories:

• Why is it so hard to make a good list of categories?
• Does the genre affect:
  • Intended audience?
  • User-interface design?
  • Implementation issues?
  • Marketing strategy?
  • Other aspects?

What Makes a Game Fun? (1/14):

• What is "fun"?
• Is fun a property of the software alone?
• What is the difference between game, play, and sport?
• Why do different people find different things fun?

User Interface for Games (1/26):

• Is UI design for games different from UI design for other kinds of software?
• How is design for game controlers and arcade hardware different from design for keyboards?

Play Testing (2/11):

• How important is play testing? Why?
• How do you do play testing?

Design for Girls and Boys (2/19):

• Do girls generally like computer games less than boys? If so, why?
• Do girls like different kinds of games than boys?
• Should we care if girls like games less? Is this a marketing issue or an equity issue?
• What games have been designed especially for girls?
• How do you design things that are gender neutral?

Community for Multi-User Environments (2/23):

• Game magazines now grade games down if they don't have a multi-user component. Is multi-user gaming a fad, or the new standard? In other words, are the reasons deep or shallow? What are those reasons?
• What is "community"?
• How are online communities similar to and different from various kinds of real world communities?
• How can a designer support the growth of community online?

Interactive Narrative (3/2):

• What is a story?
• Do viewers want to participate in stories, or just watch them?
• What different ways have people tried to make a story "interactive"?
• What are the technical challenges in making a story "interactive"?
• What are the creative challenges?
• How realistic is the model in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age? How desirable?