Engineering Strategy Games
Hey There! If you're interested in teaching game design, head on over to www.kathleenmercury.com.
I put all my resources there, for free, with explanations and a more coherent organization!
Game design is an activity that allows learners to build technical, technological, artistic, cognitive, social, and linguistic skills suitable for our current and future world. Designing games occurs through a process based on prototyping and iteration, a key game design methodology. Students work through multiple versions of any idea or solution, integrating ongoing feedback into the learning process, and reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of their design solutions.
Students create playful systems—games, models, simulations, stories, etc. Doing so allows students to learn about the way systems work and how they can be modified or changed. Through designing play, in a context they find compelling and safe, students learn to think analytically and holistically, to experiment and test out theories, and to consider other people as part of the systems they create and inhabit. (https://sites.google.com/a/elinemedia.com/gsmlearningguide/home/introduction/what-is-the-pedagogy-behind-gamestar
Systems-Thinking: Students design and analyze dynamic systems, a characteristic activity in both the media and in science today.
Interdisciplinary Thinking: Students solve problems that require them to seek out and synthesize knowledge from different domains. They become intelligent and resourceful as they learn how to find and use information in meaningful ways.
User-Centered Design: Students act as sociotechnical engineers, thinking about how people interact with systems and how systems shape both competitive and collaborative social interaction.
Specialist Language: Students learn to use complex technical linguistic and symbolic elements from a variety of domains, at a variety of different levels, for a variety of different purposes.
Meta-Level Reflection: Students learn to explicate and defend their ideas, describe issues and interactions at a meta-level, create and test hypotheses, and reflect on the impact of their solutions on others.
Helpful Links for Students (Mostly Ms. Mercury's Assignments)
How to Teach a Game
Theme
Mechanics
Prototyping
Board Game Rules
Game Workshop Forms
Final Evaluation
BGG Links
Helpful Links
Scroll to the bottom of this page for downloadable Word format templates.
Meta-Geeklist of all past semester Geeklists!
Graph paper of all different shapes and sizes.http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/
Visit www.boardgamegeek.com to look up game information, tutorial videos, reference files, and more!
The Burrow War by PT (#43)
Furniture Foxtrot HM (#14)
The Golden Cup by JW (#1)
Monkey Malarkey by AH (#31)
Kitty Wars by SM (#13)
Celestial Campaign by FH (#35)
Castle Hassle by RC (#4)
Why create a strategy game in Apogee?
First, strategy game can be compared to a machine where all parts must function together effectively for the game to work. Students will follow the iterative design model to develop and critically analyze the development of their game. Iterative Design is a cyclical process where a design undergoes a cycle of elaboration of an idea into a prototype, refinement, testing, and analysis of the product. The results allow for the evolution of the product’s successive versions (iterations) that follow the same cycle. In addition, a strategy game must be engaging and fun, or it won’t sell or people won’t want to play it. Students are challenged to develop a unique, creative, and surprising game.
Finally, students must engage in acts of metacognition, where they must analyze their thinking and the thinking of others. Anticipating the thoughts of unknown potential players and the choices that can be made is essential to developing a great game. Students must be able to clearly state goals, provide open-ended gameplay that allows for players to develop their own strategies to beat the other players or the game itself, and devise a set of rules that allow for successful play and answering of questions players may have. Students will play a variety of games, analyze their gameplay, and develop a game from initial prototype into a polished final product.
Engineering Strategy Games KUDs
K: mechanics, player goals, player interaction, player skills, sources of tension, principles of game design, themes
U: A board game can be likened to a machine in that it is composed of interrelated parts that must work in synergy with each other. If a component of the machine malfunctions, then the game won't work.
D: Develop & apply strategies based on scope and elements, others’ experiences, and one’s own experience
D: Evaluate the extend to which a strategy addresses the problem
D: Create a board game using the Iterative Design model of engineering
Articles
“Meet the New School Board: Board Games Are Back-and They're Exactly What Your Curriculum Needs”
by Christopher Harris, School Library Journal
"Sharpen Your Intellect with Strategy Board Games," David Gardner, Motley Fool
"Split Screen: Not Quite Monopoly," James Dominguez, Sydney Morning Herald