Designing Interactive Characters Syllabus - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 141

Level 9

Designing Interactive
Characters Syllabus

The full name for this course is “ Designing Interactive Characters for Digital

Games. In the curriculum, it falls in the second semester of the Games and

Simulation Arts & Sciences major. It is predominantly made up of sopho-
mores with a handful of upperclassmen. Several students are not GSAS majors
but are students in related programssuchasElectronicMediaArtsand
Communication.

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Even though as I write this we are still several weeks from the end of the
semester, and observations are necessarily incomplete, I felt that because the
course was significantly different from the first three multiplayer classrooms,
giving the information I have on it to date, would prove helpful.

My dilemma was twofold: Once you teach any class as a game, your students
have played that game. They know both the structure and the content. If they
take a second class from you, or if their friends take the class you have taught
already, they can game the class.

Game

Used as a verb, to gameor metagamemeans to exploit the design of a game; to use that design in
ways it was never intended to be used to beat the game.