David Ogborn (dktr0)
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MEDIAART 3L03: Game Design

Note: This is the "fluid syllabus" for the course MEDIAART 3L03: Game Design at McMaster University (Winter 2025 semester). Expectations, policies, rules, etc will be the same as the official course outline (which current students can access in PDF and DOCX format on Avenue), but this fluid version is formatted differently to take advantage of web possibilities, can be navigated in different ways, has up-to-date links to more detailed resources of various types, and will be updated to refer to new resources as they become available.

Instructor: Dr. David Ogborn (“Dr. 0”, he/they), ogbornd@mcmaster.ca
Office Hours: Fridays 12:30–1:20 or 4:30–5:30 in TSH-306; or by email appointment
Full-class meetings: Fridays, 1:30 – 4:20 PM, TSH-203 & Media Arts Wing (TSH-202B)
Online Content: Avenue-to-Learn, Discord, my website at https://dktr0.github.io

Quick Links

Course Objectives

Welcome to MEDIAART 3L03: Game Design, a course in which we will explore game technologies in a hands-on way, using them to create video games both individually and collectively. This is how the course is described in the McMaster undergraduate calendar for 2022-23: “Students will develop designs and assets for digital games, informed by readings and discussions of game design theory.”

This will be the 67th course I have led as a university instructor, and my 5th time teaching this particular course, which I first proposed as new addition to the Media Arts (then “Multimedia”) program back in 2013, teaching it for the first time in 2014-15. My motivation to champion this course is rooted in the perception that making games is (1) an amazing vehicle for exploration and learning in Media Arts, and (2) a milieu full of diverse career/life possibilities for students, and (3) a way of deepening my own engagement with games, game studies, and game making. I am very much looking forward to what we will make together over the next three months! For this year’s version of the course, I am hoping we will be able to develop a collective and non-exclusive focus on games and the environment/games and ecology.

During the second half of the semester, we’ll work together as a unified team on a single, collective game project, producing a more substantial game than any of us could achieve individually in such a short time frame. We’ll aim to share this game widely: with the McMaster campus, with the wider community of students working on game projects at multiple institutions around this corner of Lake Ontario (via the annual Level Up Showcase), and as free software on the Internet. Our weekly meetings in the second half of the semester will be entirely devoted to working together on this collective project (substantial independent work on this project between meetings will also be required).

Leading up to that, our work in the first half of the course will be focused on developing what we’ll need, individually, for our collectively-made game. We’ll develop theoretical vocabulary to describe the features of video games and their design/development processes, and consider how social difference plays out in games and game design. We’ll produce “game assets” (such as game-ready 3D models, images, and sounds) and incorporate them into game engine projects, and explore implementing different types of game rules or “mechanics”. We’ll get to know each other, get used to working together, and develop our readiness to share ideas about game elements.

To become and remain an effective team, we need to show up for each other as much as possible, including by attending full-class meetings from the beginning to the end. But please don’t attend when you are feeling ill NOR when there are compelling circumstances that mean that you would not be able to contribute meaningfully to those meetings (e.g., personal/family emergencies, mental health crises, challenges meeting basic needs such as food or shelter, etc). You don’t need to explain such absences to me, although if you feel it would help to talk to me about it, I’m certainly here for that.

I’ll establish a Discord server for the class (invite link on Avenue, not to be shared with folks outside our class), and encourage everyone to join it and use it to communicate in between class meetings (here is Discord’s privacy policy). Discord is the recommended way of submitting the Brief Analysis of a Game Detail assignment during the first half of the course, and will be especially helpful as we move into the fully collaborative collective game project. Please ensure that your handle on the class Discord server reflects the preferred way that we should call you, so that we all know who is who (Discord allows you to set a specific name for a specific server, by the way).

I also strongly encourage you to visit me during my office hours (Fridays during the hour before and after our full-class meeting). I’m happy to talk about anything related to this course, and I’m also happy to talk about other things as well (e.g. games, music, careers, graduate school, etc)!

Textbooks, Materials, & Fees

You DON’T need to buy any books or texts. Some of the texts we’ll refer to are already freely available on the open web, and I may make some other texts available inside Avenue on a fair use basis.

We’ll be using two pieces of free-and-open-source software heavily: the Godot game engine (version 4.3-stable, standard NOT mono) and the 3D modeling software known as Blender (version 4.2 LTS). This software will be installed and available in the Media Arts wing. If you expect to work on your own computer as well, you’ll need to install the exact versions of both of these software packages on your computer.

You DO need to sign up for keycard access to the Media Arts wing (TSH-202B), equipment reservation system, and surround sound studio. This requires the purchase of a key card for $10.00 (non-refundable, charged to your student account) in TSH 209 between 8:00am-12:00pm and 1:00pm-4:00pm Monday to Friday (times subject to change, see https://hmcservicecentre.humanities.mcmaster.ca/ for further details). Please sign up for this as soon as possible.

The use of an external three-button mouse (i.e. one that you plug into your computer with a USB cable and can move separately from the computer) is strongly recommended during this course, especially when working with Blender.

Method of Assessment

Assessment in this course works in a different way than what you might be used to. For a few years now I have been exploring what is sometimes called “alternative grading”, and my experiences with it continue to convince me that it is a profoundly positive thing. Here are the four principles guiding my evolving approach to assessment:

  • Clear Standards: We should have a high level of clarity about how work meets or does not yet meet standards for the course, and about how a specific final grade is earned.
  • Epistemic Peace: The standards are narrowly defined (a.k.a. “technical”), so that you are free to submit work whose motivations and aesthetic choices might be quite different than my own.
  • Feedback Loops: Work that does not yet meet a standard can and should be resubmitted.
  • Accessibility: Short-term difficulties (such as situations connected to disability, illness, emergencies, workload, etc) present no obstacle to earning the full range of available grades.

Here’s how it works concretely. There are three basic things everyone in the class needs to do, and successfully fulfilling all three of these basic expectations in a timely way earns a “base grade” of 9 (B+) on McMaster’s 12-point scale:

In the hopefully unlikely event that someone doesn’t meet one or more of the three basic expectations, the base grade of 9 would be reduced by 3 points (a letter grade) for each expectation that was not met. The grade would also be reduced by 1 point for each basic expectation that is “almost but not quite met”, including when the work is acceptable but arrives too late to fully contribute to our collective discussion and deliberation.

I strongly encourage you to aim to complete work above and beyond these basic expectations. Such work will be rewarded with a higher grade. Specifically, you can earn a grade above 9 (B+) through the addition of a single point on McMaster’s 12-point scale (to a maximum of 12) for each of the following:

  • Attend at least 9 out of 11 in-person full-class meetings from beginning to end AND contribute a Brief Analysis of a Game Detail to our class discussion
  • Demonstrate level 3 competency in one of the 5 areas of technical practice
  • Demonstrate level 2 competency in another one of the 5 areas of technical practice
  • Be recognized by the instructor (me) for “above and beyond” contributions throughout our collective game project

Accommodation for absences from part or all of class meetings (for any and all reasons) has been “baked in, in advance, universally” to this assessment structure in two ways: (1) A strong record of attendance is not the only way to earn the highest possible grade; and (2) there is no grading difference between attending 9, 10, or 11 full-class meetings. No further grading accommodation of absence is possible, strictly. Absences could also impact your ability to deliver on other course expectations, such as making regular and salient contributions to our collective game project. Please reach out as soon as possible in such cases so that we can strategize together about how to work around the impact of any necessary absences on the other concrete expectations of this course.

Since it might seem unusual or unfamiliar, we’ll discuss some grading scenarios during our first full-class meeting, and we’ll continue to check in about how everything is going as the semester progresses. Please reach out to me at any time if you are unsure about how any of this works! And please rest assured there will be plenty of qualitative feedback in the course (from me, from each other), beyond the mechanical questions of credit and grades addressed by this grading system.

Course Policy on Missed Work, Extensions, and Late Penalties

We need to be accountable to each other in this course, aiming to do what we are expected to do in a timely fashion so that it contributes meaningfully to our own learning, the learning of others, and to the things that we produce together as a group of learners and media artists. At the same time, when obstacles arise that present challenges to things happening “on time”, we need to find ways of getting “things” back on track, including our relationships of accountability and cooperation with each other, and also credit towards the final grade.

Because of the alternative grading approach used in this course, the approach to missed and late work might be a bit different than what you may expect, and has to be specific to each component of the course. In general, the goal is to have policies that accommodate missed or late work without penalty where it poses no impact to the work or learning of others, and to have simple and proportionate reductions of the final grade when (unfortunately) missed or late work does have an impact beyond the individual. Please contact me as soon as possible to discuss any challenges (be they “standing” or emergent) for which the following measures do not already represent meaningful repair:

Technical Practice: The six weekly submission folders for demonstrating areas of technical practice will close strictly and finally at 10 PM each Friday during the first 6 weeks of the course. If you miss a submission to the weekly submission folder, please just plan to demonstrate whatever you were going to demonstrate in the following week or in your Individual Game Project. Note also that it is fine to submit games for weekly submissions that demonstrate multiple areas and/or levels of achievement.

Individual Game Project: Please submit this project by the due date, and please get in touch with me as soon as possible if it looks like that might not be possible. Submissions that don’t do what we need as a cooperative learning and game-making collective, whether in terms of contacting me about lateness or contributing to class ideation and discussion (via the showcase) will result in a reduced final grade in the course (by 1 point on McMaster’s 12-point scale).

Collective Game Project: Please plan to submit your portfolio of contributions to the collective game project by the due date. I will need to submit final grades for the course on Fri 18 Apr (in order to move on to whatever comes next!), and thus will not be able to accommodate final portfolio submissions that arrive later than end of day on 17 Apr (the base grade would be reduced by one point on McMaster’s 12-point scale for any missing portfolios at the time of grade submission).

Brief Analysis of a Game Detail: As this is scheduled flexibly over 5 weeks of course time, as it is part of a set of options for earning higher grades in the course (there are other ways to get that credit), and as it is a necessary prior step to our working together as team starting in week 7, no credit will be granted for brief analyses shared after the week six meeting of the course.

Topics and Readings

Schedule

Games and Texts (aka the Bibliography)

Other Course Information

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank all the past students of this course, whose enthusiasm and creativity have both shaped its successive iterations and made it a pleasure to teach. A special thank you to Nicolas Hesler for reaching out to connect this class with the Level Up showcase many years ago, and to the organizers and sustainers of the Level Up showcase for providing such a wonderful, shared venue for all of us. Many thanks also to all the amazing people from around the world who have contributed to the Godot game engine and Blender as free and open-source software projects!

For official McMaster University policies/statements related to this course, please see the PDF or DOCX versions of the course outline posted on Avenue To Learn (current McMaster students enrolled in the course only.)