Introduction to Game Design Syllabus - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 102

Bartle s personality types are good for more than justifying my role-playing class

for writers. We will be going into game design in greater depth starting on Level
11. But it

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s worth mentioning here that your class is divided into these four types
as surely as any MMO. When you design your game, it would be folly not to
include equal gameplay for each of them.

Programmers became warriors. They are usually in the thick of battle, and if
they fail, the battle is often lost. Without programmers, there is no video game.

Artists became healers. As Congreve wrote in his play, The Mourning Bride :
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Art has long been known to heal by changing attitude, and therefore physiology,
by reducing stress and fostering relaxation.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. � (Yes, it ' s “ breast" not “ beast. �

No, they aren s avatar relevant

in a game design class, not just consistent with the world of the game I

' t perfect. I am still struggling to make the student '

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designing. As we will see on Level 9, in that class, the solution is far simpler.

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Under the heading of the syllabus I also went into more detail about

how students, even freshmen, could fulfill the various roles they would be asked
to play in the design of their guild

Format

' s game. For this, I introduced another game

concept: buffs.

Buff

A buff is an enhancement to a player s power, either permanent or temporary. A permanent

enhancement is bestowed by the game mechanics, such as leveling. A temporary enhancement is
caused by something within the world of the game, such as a spell.

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In this case, I wanted to reassure students that they need not be experts in the
role in which they ended up. Remember some may not have gotten their first or
even second choice. It would be difficult to force someone without programming
experience to be responsible for making programming choices even if they
weren

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t required to code. Pointing out to them they could research into what
their role required, or rely on examples and images they didn ' t produce

themselves, was sufficient to soothe a number of savage breasts.

The next big change was the table under I wanted to try

and tackle the imbalance in the leveling I described earlier. I was careful to add
the words In Development because this didn

“ Grading Procedure. �

' t feel right either. I added additional