The Role:
Everyone thinks they can be a game designer, but designing games professionally is a demanding art requiring creativity, critical thinking and an unwavering pursuit of the concept of fun. Senior game designers help concept the overall vision of the game and flesh out how individual portions of the game will work. The whole of the design team is responsible for fiction, scripting (light coding) and worldbuilding, and at the close of the project, they are the ones responsible for putting all of the pieces together, turning the game into a coherent whole which is fun, fair and balanced.
Successful game designers are well-rounded individuals, who have not only a passion for video games, but a broad base of knowledge covering a wealth of topics that could become instructive to their designs. Successful game designers are also masters of tools use, and feel confident using not only common game design tools such as UnrealEd and the Neverwinter Nights toolset, but also more conventional office tools such as Word, Powerpoint, Access and Excel. Above all, successful game designers are creative, inquisitive, good communicators, and excel at synthesizing other people's ideas into their own.
This program gives designers a broad overview of the mechanics of game design and how to navigate the elusive search for fun. However, more critically, this program gives designers the skills they need to break into the industry, giving them the fundamentals of worldbuilding, interactive fiction and scripting. Getting a job as a game designer is highly competitive, and any edge will help potential entry level positions stand out - this curriculum will help design candidates pursue jobs with confidence and a portfolio designed to demonstrate their design strengths.