Multiplayer Game Design Syllabi - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 61

Experience has borne out the benefit of this subtle change. Last semester ' s class,

“ had nearly perfect attendance: Three absences

that were unexcused, but I was informed of them in advance, one excused
absence, and only one where a student failed to show up, although he apologized
after the fact. I will reproduce attendance sheets for all four classes later in the
book.
It wasn

Introduction to Game Design, �

m currently teaching that I finally introduced a system
of leveling that actually began at least to solve the problems of students leveling
too slowly at the beginning and being uncertain how they were progressing. It

' t until the class I '

' s

no coincidence that it is much simpler with multiple graded tasks.

More work for the teacher? Obviously. More grading ? Ick! However, the
workload is balanced by the fact that individual lessons are not prepared by
the teacher to present to students. They do the preparation. The teacher is the
Game Master. All you need to do is sit back and moderate their teaching. If they
skip an important concept, or fail to explain it sufficiently, you can always step
in. The multiplayer classroom takes more planning in what we call the
preproduction stage. But once the game is released (when students are playing
it), all of that work pays off in classes that are more fun for you, as well as the
students, without sacrificing the quality of the learning experience.

Conduct
One section found in all of the syllabi that I have not touched on yet is conduct.
As a professional writer, I am very cognizant of the power of the pen, or the
spoken word, over the sword. In our increasingly uncivil society, one of the first
beachheads of the war on civility is the classroom. Students from all walks of life
enter with their own perceptions of appropriate behavior and discourse nurtured
by their homes and peers.

Multiplayer games from World of Warcraft to the multiplayer mode of first-
person shooters allow audible chat. Players speak to one another through
microphones and headphones either facilitated by external software, or within
the game itself. This serves two purposes. The first: Orders to fellow players on a
team can be delivered much faster, a necessity in boss raids and when battling
other teams of human players. The second was introduced on the previous level:
trash talking.