Last night was the first of five classes titled “Introduction to Game Design”. It was a reasonably good first start, although I’m still adjusting to how to pace the course material. Hopefully those who attended enjoyed themselves and learned something new.
I hadn’t made proper handout in time, so here are links to the (optional) readings that I assigned.
Common Game Prototyping Pitfalls
How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days
Iterative Design
Affordances and Design
We ended the class by playing through a round of GameGame 2.0, a card game that aims to teach players what the core elements of a game design are. It also makes for an interesting brainstorming tool, as over the course of the game you have to take the cards you’ve collected and translate them into a pitch for a new game concept. It was pretty successful and the students did a great job of making things up on the spot. I don’t think GameGame alone does a perfect job at outlining the elements that make up a game design, but it’s close enough that it can be used to augment a more detailed discussion.
josh g.'s notes 
I just read your post on Portal and Feminism while I was doing some research and found it really interesting. Is there an email where I could contact you and ask you some questions?
Josh, how’s it going?
Been following your blog as an indie game developer myself, and coming from a design background, I find it interesting.
I posted a link to your blog on my wordpress, http://acstrauch.wordpress.com/
We’re really trying to build our viewership and get the word out for our game under development, so if you’d be at all interested in posting a link to our site in your blogroll, I’d appreciate it. If not, that’s cool.
Best,
Andy
I love the GameGame cards idea. Learning game design can be quite challenging and its nice to throw in something different from time to time.