Introduction to Game Design Class - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 123

Figure 8.14
Spaceman Sam explains the intricate rules to City Survivor to testers.

First, as we did in previous classes, rules for the games were posted online in
advance of the prototype session, so that playtime would not be wasted with
explanations of rule sets (see Figure 8.14). However, as in previous classes, not
all that many players bothered to read the rules in advance. This shouldn tbe

surprising to game publishers who a number of years ago stopped including
more than the most rudimentary manuals with their games. Players don

'

' t want

to read rules. They want to play!

Luckily, being gamers, they picked up the games very quickly on the day. One
member from each guild stayed at their table to game master their prototype.
The other guild members moved from table to table, playing each game for a set
period of time.

After feedback from their testers both during play, and in a postmortem session
in the next class, guilds polished their game concepts. Their hardest test yet was
quickly approaching. On November 19, they pitched their games to the Final
Bosses: Chris Foster and Jesse Schell, as shown in Figure 8.15. Chris and Jesse
played commercial game industry publishers: cold, heartless beasts who could
wipe guild raids in a few seconds.

Actually, both of the Final Bosses were tough but fair: grilling guilds on their
designs, budgets, assumptions of how the commercial game industry operates,
and much more (see Figure 8.16).