Game Design 

This module enables researchers to understand, critique, and create engaging entertainment and

applied game designs as part of their research. It is organised into two components, Game Design

Principles and Applied Game Design Research, each assessed separately. Game Design Principles uses

rapid experimental making and critiquing of analogue games to introduce key concepts, components,

and methods of game design and train creative skills. Applied Game Design Research combines

lectures, discussion, and an applied game design sprint to engage researchers in critical reflection on

how games affect change in desired and undesired ways, and introduces them to the use of applied

game design frameworks to develop an applied game for a societal issue.

To develop a grounded understanding of when, why, and how games research can usefully inform

practice by becoming literate in key concepts, aspects, and methods of entertainment and applied

game design and gaining a first-hand appreciation for the complexity, diversity, and reality of game

design

• To enable researchers to make games as part of conducting or communicating their research

• To develop and practise creative and critical skills in game-making

• To learn to independently and collaboratively produce entertainment and applied game

prototypes and deliverables communicating design decisions

• To foster a critical awareness of how game design impacts individuals and society, enabling

researchers to conduct responsible innovation in games

Subject Content:

• Apply key game design concepts in discussing game designs

• Apply key frameworks and theories to reason about potential individual and societal effects of

a given game design

• Develop, select, and revise fitting game design ideas for a target briefing

• Create concise, useful, usable game design documentation

• Independently choose and perform key game design methods such as play testing to advance a

game concept

• Independently create and iterate playable game prototypes

• Critically assess the utility of a given knowledge formalisation or tool against personal game

design practice

Academic and Graduate Skills:

• Effectively collaborate with diverse team members in a design process

• Communicate and justify design ideas and decisions to specialist and non-specialist audiences

• Critique designs and how different design aspects contribute to their overall experience

• Schell, J. (2019). The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses. 3rd ed. AK Peters/CRC Press.

• Fullerton, T. (2018). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative

Games. 4th ed. CRC Press.

• Culyba, S. H. (2018). The Transformational Framework. A Process Tool for the Development of

Transformational Games. ETC Press.