Verbal Spewage

Configuring Your Space

Before diving into the myriad skills that game deign encompasses, let’s talk about space.  Like any program, you have to create an environment conducive to the outcome expected.  Throwing a bunch of games in a room might let people enjoy themselves, but it won’t necessarily help people explore how design works.  It would work well for a board game night program, and that can feed into a design program, but they aren’t interdependent.  Ideally you should have a stock of games on hand that match the types of games you want to design.  There are a couple of reasons for this, which will be covered below.

The most important reason is you don’t know if your audience has played these games before or not.  And, while some perennial favorites are ubiquitous, not everyone has grown up with them or had access to them.  So, this is as much an issue of equity as it is ensuring everyone has the same reference materials on hand.  But the other aspect for this reason is is simply having a referral point where your patrons have something to look at or use as a benchmark to test against their own designs.

The second reason may be less crucial to the success of the program, but it’s one that is important nonetheless.  Quite simply, there are multiple themes and rules that can create games that have the same mechanics and belong to the general classifications for the modules laid out in this program.  What this lets new designers do is understand that there is no one way to accomplish a task.  Both Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land are racing games, but they use different mechanisms to get there.  The same is true of matching games like Memory and Husker Du.  All are racing games, but they use different looks and methods to determine who gets to the end first.

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What Game Design Teaches, Part 1

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What Game Design Teaches, Part 3

Depending on your programming needs, you can skip this section.  That said, reading this will provide some insight as to why these programs are not only valuable but necessary in today’s world.  With that in mind, let’s cover the basics, though if you’re interested in this as a program, you probably already have a grasp on what game design can accomplish and why you want to have a design program.  Game design, like all design careers, is a multiple disciplinary skill set.  This means anyone looking to do it well will have to study a wide variety of topics in order to draw from the best sources necessary to create a game that matches the expectations they have.

The key benefit that game design provides for libraries is information literacy.  While at the outset this might not seem applicable, as the designer works on a more complex design or ways to take various mechanics to create a new game experience, the central asset developed is insight into how information is or can be structured, how it gets interpreted, and how it can be applied.  Drawing a simple game board might not convey this, but the way the rules develop points in this direction and it becomes more apparent in complex game designs where players have multiple elements to keep track of during play.

As noted in previous installments, game design is deeply rooted in STEAM principles and practices.  Depending on the modules used, the act of game creation will use these areas in varying degrees.  The effect is to develop 21^st century skills in a fun and meaningful way that encourages experimentation.  A fundamental aspect of STEAM being that failure can be fun is engendered in a game design program as the participants are provided with the tools and perhaps a prompt or design challenge, but otherwise do not have any guidance to impinge on their approach to solving or meeting the end goal.

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Tools, Games, Interaction, and Play for 18+

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What Game Design Teaches, Part 2