Theory and Practice of Game Design Class - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 41

Figure 4.4
Farming as a profession in China.

FARMING

Farming is killing the same mobs — usually a much lower level than the player — over and over

again as the most efficient way to gain levels and loot.

We used as our textbook Understanding Video Games by Simon Egenfeldt-
Nielsen, Jonas Heide Smith, and Susana Pajares Tosca. It had been published
just the year before, and I chose it because it was the only book I could find that
combined game development and game studies in one place and was easy
enough to understand for beginning students.

The problem with it was that it was apparently never copy edited, nor edited by
anyone who knows anything about games. There were dozens of errors from
simple typos to errors of fact, such as placing Doom s release in the wrong

decade. Our class farmed over 80 such errors for extra credit. Of course, those
who found the most needed the extra XP the least.

'

As the semester progressed, I noticed a big mistake I had made in my quest
system. The novelty of the students handling the lectures only went so far

—
particularly when too many players were turning out to be no better than the
most boring of teachers, presenting black bulleted points on white backgrounds;
doing no more than reading them aloud.