Multiplayer Game Design Syllabi - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 58

As our primary text, I chose Richard Bartle s Designing Virtual Worlds , still the

best introduction to virtual world history and production. If you have an interest
in attempting to create one of these, read this topic.

'

The 2008 Syllabus
I prepared the syllabus shown in Figure 5.1 for the Spring 2008 version of
“ �

Multiplayer Game Design.

One thing to notice about this earlier syllabus and the one on Level 3 is that
there are far fewer tasks that contribute to the final grade. A difference between
traditional methods of teaching and the multiplayer classroom is that there are
many more grades in an MC (multiplayer classroom). Yet, this is precisely what
the students expect. In an MMO, there is an unlimited supply of repeatable tasks
to guarantee that players can always level up. In an MC, there must be enough
assignments to replicate that aspect of gameplay (many opportunities for XP)
and rewards (many opportunities for incremental rewards).

Grading and Attendance
I have a student friend in law school who has a class where the entire grade is the
final exam. This makes some sense. If an attorney wants to practice law in a
particular state (or group of states with a reciprocal agreement), the attorney
must pass a single bar exam. It s all or nothing. This would seem logical in the

multiplayer classroom because we

'

ve already looked at boss raids where players
fail multiple times before they figure out the precise tactics and strategy to defeat
the boss mob. The difference is that those players have spent weeks achieving
smaller victories, which are also rewarded on a smaller scale.

'

In a traditional grading system, if you miss an assignment, you lose points. In
the MC, you can always make up the assignment

—

you simply earn less XP. In
my earlier classes, perfect attendance is rewarded with 100 pts. Students who
miss classes have points deducted from that total. In the MC, students are
awarded XP for every class they attend.
This may sound like the same thing, and in mathematical terms, it is. However,
the feeling for the students is different, and this feeling of attrition instead of
subtraction is familiar to them from games. They are more comfortable with it.
They know how to game this system: Show up and gain XP. It ' s easy!