Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Level 3
Theory and Practice of
Game Design Syllabi
Flashback: Summer of 2009
The first step in designing the new class was to decide what type of game to
make it. With a total of 40 students possible in the class, multiplayer was an
obvious choice, and the classroom is a real-time environment. There are real-
time multiplayer versions of shooters and strategy games, as well as the
multiplayer social games that have exploded in popularity on Facebook.
However, my preferred online gaming experience these days is persistent worlds,
massively multiplayer online role-playing games or MMORPGs. Remember that
first long acronym now shortened to MMOs? I
ve played many of these games,
starting out with
Ultima Online
(1997) and continuing through
Lord of the Rings
Online,
and the king of them all,
World of Warcraft
.
'
And while most of my commercial design work has been solo games, I
ve
worked on MMOs from Cyan, Microsoft, and other companies, including a
current project,
Star Trek: Infinite Space
for Gameforge. So the choice to design
the class as a multiplayer role-playing game seemed like a natural one.
'
Stay Flexible
While multiplayer online games are played in real-time, they are designed first
and played afterward. Even the inevitable gameplay updates for such issues as
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