Introduction to Game Design Syllabus - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 103

lower levels, easier to reach with less XP. However, the glaring error was that
with the first five levels, the only thing achieved was the level itself. It was little
consolation to someone who was gaining XP and levels relatively fast, only to see
online, where their grades were tracked, that they still officially had an F.

My last class session every semester is a a term the game

development community has borrowed from a medical examiner picking
apart a corpse to determine how the victim died. In the industry, it is the
game that is picked apart, features discussed, design decisions studied, and
personnel issues scrutinized.

“ postmortem, �

My classes are the victims that the students get to pick apart on the last day. We
have an open dialogue about what they felt worked and what went wrong. And
more often than not, their observations help me make my next class better.
Nothing was dissected more thoroughly in the first three classes �

than the leveling system. Thanks to the students, I think in the fourth iteration
(still ongoing at this writing) we

'“ postmortems

' ll discuss in Level 9, we ' re finally getting close.

Despite the lack of interest in glossary building the previous spring, I again
trotted this out as a worthwhile exercise to gain some extra XP.

Brand New Parts to the Syllabus
Following the “ Grading Procedure � section, I added three new parts to the

“ �

syllabus. The first of these was Expansion Packs.

Expansion Pack

In development after the initial release of a game, expansion packs add new material, including
additional story, new areas to explore, new items, and sometimes more levels.

Here I explained the two major challenges I had identified. One was the leveling
system. The second was Rensselaer Learning Management System (LMS). This
was the promise that I, the game designer and developer, would continue to
work on these items in the hopes of correcting them as the semester wore on. I
failed with the leveling system.
Using LMS was a mixed bag. It is an adaptation of the Blackboard Learning
System , a course administration tool used by a number of universities. At