Theory and Practice of Game Design Class - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 35

n Wandering Wastes. Wandering is the term we use when a player loses
direction in a game and does not know what to do next. This is bad.
n Interface Island. The interface between the game and the player should
be intuitive and transparent. This serves to draw the player into the
game world.
n The Verbal Vale. Game design, at its heart, is deciding what the player
can do. This is indicated by active verbs: run, jump, talk, build, and so on.

Throughout the course of the semester, it was my plan to move the guilds from
zone to zone. This meant that no guild would always be at the front or back of
the class. My only idea in the first class was to break the common pattern of
slackers with smart phones in their laps, texting instead of learning.

This worked well. At any given time, only two of the five guilds would be in the
back of the classroom. Also, since the guilds were formed based on interest in a
particular game idea and chosen roles, friends were split among the guilds,
mixing those who weren ' t all that interested in participating with students eager

to engage in discussion.

This came at a price. Up until this class, I had used a seating chart to teach
myself the names of my students. The seating chart was useless because the
guilds moved around the room every few weeks. It took me a lot longer than it
had before to finally put names to faces.

Combat is a large part of the gameplay in many MMOs. Most of our game ' s

combat took the form of PvE.

PvE: Player vs. Environment

PvE is gameplay where players fight against mobs controlled by programming we call artificial
intelligence or AI.

In our case, PvE took the form of the quizzes and the midterm exam. Another
example of flexibility these freestanding chair desks made possible was during
PvP.

PvP: Player vs. Player

PvP is gameplay where players are pitted against one another.