L3 Game Design

AS91901- The Best Design

Below is the complete task for AS91901- Apply user experience methodologies to develop a design for a digital technologies outcome worth 3 credits at NCEA Level 2

This webpage supports the completion of the task.

Please read the task to familiarise yourself with what is required over the next 4 weeks.

Student Task- The best design 2025

Task 1: Learn MDA

What is MDA?

This video by Game Makers Toolkit is a great explanation of what MDA is and why it is important.

Watch the whole video to try to understand how Mechanics can be designed to affect the way your players will "feel" when playing your game.

This is the key to user centred design.

MDA- A Formal appoach to game design.pdf

The official research paper.

Of course this approach is based on academic research and is considered the most important piece of research for game designers who want to create great user experiences for the people who play their games.

Read the paper.

Pay close attention to the "aesthetics". Every game has several of these aesthetics in varying amounts.

MDA Game Analysis

Assignment#1

Click HERE to go to the Schoology Assignment

This will help you to demonstrate to your teacher that you understand MDA and how to think like a game designer.

You'll be using your favourite game and you can chat with others and start a discussion if you wish about what aesthetics your favourite game has and why.

Task 2: Define some design ideas

You now have decisions to make. If you are working in a team, you will have to choose the “best” proposal from each of your inquiries.

Using your proposal from your earlier inquiry, it’s time to start modelling out some ideas.

The purpose is to be able to come up with 3 decent ideas and write each one down as a simple game synopsis.

Then by getting feedback from others and discussion within your group, choose and refine one idea to come up with a justifiable final decision.

Considerations might be scope, difficulty to make, strengths and weaknesses within the team, time and the availability of hardware or software.

The idea here is to explore lots of ideas BEFORE committing time to one.

Do NOT make the mistake of narrow mindedly heading off into potential disaster without first exploring options and getting feedback.

Whats a synopsis?

Using your chosen proposal from your Inquiry, write three synopses.

A simple synopsis for each idea will define:

Character- who do you play as?
Theme- what genre(s) is the game?
Setting- where is it set?
Objective- what's the main goal for the player?
Challenge- what stops them achieving the goal

Watch the video to help explain more.

Initial Designs

Complete the Initial Designs Task

Click HERE to go to the Schoology Assignment

Again, you'll be needing this for your final assessment.

So fill this out after discussion with your team or other classmates.

Task 3: Have we thought of everything?

Relevant Implications Task

Complete the Relevant Implications Task

Click here to go to the Schoology Assignment

This contains a fairly comprehensive list of things potential implications that you should consider.

Not all of them will be relevant but you should take a moment to think about each of them

In this task, you have to explain each one and why it may or may not be relevant.

This will be required for your final assessment.

Task 4: Complete your Game Design Document

Game Design Document

Make a copy of this and get sketching!

As a team, complete your Game Design Document.

The GDD must contain sketches, drawings, concept art, descriptions, diagrams etc. It must convey a detailed description of what you intend to make.

You should generate lots of sketches and ideas, discuss them with your team and choose the best ones or refine the ideas so you can all be on the same page with what the game is going to be.

Please feel free to change the headings, fonts, images, colors etc to make the GDD as attractive as possible.

A couple of exemplars

gdd_exemplar1.pdf

Exemplar 1

gdd_exemplar2.pdf

Exemplar 2

Exam Time!

As you have worked in a team for some of the parts of this assessment, you will need to show your teacher that you have understood the process that you have gone through to make this design.

You will now be given an exam to be done in class under exam conditions. This exam will require that you copy and paste all of the section into it. So make sure you have completed:

MDA Game Analysis
Initial Designs
Relevant Implications Task
The Game Design Document

It is OK if you see the questions, but everything you type in to the exam must be done in class and by you. No Copy and Paste of the answers and no AI assistance! The answers that you type will be specific to your design process and your teacher will be the final judge of whether it is authentic or not.

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