Teaching Game Design in a Hungarian High School Summer Camp
As a Computer Science educator, I was always enthusiastic about teaching unconventional topics. Unfortunately, the Hungarian National Curriculum is rigid in terms of creative freedom. This bothered me since the day I started teaching because I really like games. Also, I strongly believe that games can and should be a part of CS education.
That’s why my wife and I decided to host a Computer Science Camp for our students this summer. Our main goal was to cram in as many interesting topics as possible for the 5 days.
We even included subjects that we knew almost nothing about. I’m happy to say that Game Design was one of them.
I had no previous experience in Game Design whatsoever. Okay, I participated in a couple of Game Jams before, so I guess I could say I designed a few games. But given the context of the cruel deadline and the heavy scope limitations of Game Jams, I feel like that would be an exaggeration.
Anyways, I figured I need to learn the foundations of Game Design before the camp starts. I read Jesse Schell’s The Art of Game Design along with Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun. If you are interested in Games Design or games in general, go ahead and read them. You won’t regret it, I promise.
After reading the literature I felt stuck. I had all this newly acquired knowledge but I didn’t know what to do with it. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long for the epiphany. I stumbled upon Riot Games’ Urf Academy when randomly browsing my bookmarks (I’m guilty of having a massive mess of a bookmark collection).
It was a perfect fit for the camp. The curriculum promotes group work and cooperation over individual work which I think is the essence of a good Game Designer (and also the essence of education, but I digress…).
So we studied the Urf Academy material and used that as a base for the Game Design workshops, with a few tweaks here and there.
The first and second lessons put the player in focus. First, we had an interesting discussion about the relationship between emotions and games. What emotions can emerge in the player while playing games?
The students were surprised how easy it was for them to associate negative emotions with games. I was astonished to see that some groups actually struggled to come up with positive emotions.
The next topic on the list was fun. I truly think that understanding why games are fun is one of the key abilities of a good Game Designer. This lesson was a real educational experience for me as well.
Koster dives deep into this topic in his book but Urf Academy recommends a shorter read, namely the MDA Framework which splits fun into 8 (non-mutually exclusive) categories.
The students were able to think of great examples for each type as we went through the list one by one.
After the introductory sessions, the students were eager to put their newfound knowledge to the test. The next topic was game goals. Urf Academy suggests playing a game called paper football with different subgoals and main goals. It involves a lot of playtesting. Perfect for the kids!
First things first, we made some paper footballs based on this guide. But they were bland and boring. It was time for the students to spice them up a bit. Needless to say, they did an excellent job.
Afterwards, we talked about the basic rules of the game. They are pretty simple:
- Start the game by placing all footballs in the center of the table.
- If any football goes off the table, place it anywhere near the center of the table.
- The goal of the game is to use your football to knock any other player’s football into their own goal. E.g., Player 3, could use their football (marked 3) to knock player 2’s football into player 2’s goal to score a point.
- Each player has 3 moves per turn.
- Players can move their piece in any manner, so long as it is a continuous movement. E.g., Flick, shove, swipe, etc.
- A player’s turn ends if a football goes off the table.
Students playtested the game with 4 radically different given goals, playing for 5 to 10 minutes with each goal. Then, the real fun began. They had to create their own goals and playtest it together with the team. The main rule was that they can’t alter the game’s basic mechanics.
They came up with impressive, creative ideas ranging from battle royale to complicated manoeuvre-based ones like scoring at least two points within one turn.
Honestly, it was a blast. We had a ton of fun and we learned so much from the experience. After the thorough playtesting session, we discussed and evaluated the goals they came up with. Some key questions:
How did the goal contribute to the game experience?
What makes a goal good or bad?
Which goal made the game really intense? Why?
Unfortunately, this is all the time we had for the Urf Academy course. But we had another idea connected to Game Design as well.
We wanted to provide cooldown periods between the more cognitively demanding workshops. That’s why we introduced board gaming sessions in the schedule.
Students had a wide variety of games to choose from. What they didn’t know is that they weren’t just playing. We wanted them to analyze the game as well, from a Game Designer’s perspective.
They had to answer some interesting questions in a form after / during their playtesting sessions. Some questions from the top of my head:
On a scale of 1–6 how fun do you think the game is?
What types of fun the game builds upon?
What emotions did you feel while playing the game?
On a scale of 1–6 how clear the goals of the game are?
What other goals could make the game more fun?
Can you image the game with a completely different theme? If so, what theme would fit the game better?
If you think they gave clever answers you’re absolutely right. Even though some groups and kids didn’t take this task seriously, there were so many creative, out-of-the-box answers… I was truly amazed.
The best part of being a teacher is how much you can learn from your students. Ironically, the fact that we decided to give them a glimpse into the field of Game Design made me much better at Game Design. To this day, this experience fuels my curiosity to learn more about it.
Kids really ARE the future. Who would’ve thought? :)
