Multiplayer Game Design Class - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 69

Level 6

Multiplayer Game
Design Class

“ was taught in the Radio/TV Center on the Indiana

University, Bloomington campus. The Department of Telecommunications,
where I was an assistant professor, is housed there, as are WTIU, the PBS
television station, and WFIU, its sister radio station. They serve over 20 counties
in western and south-central Indiana. Completed in 1963, the building has been
upgraded several times over the years and now features broadband, remote
conferencing facilities, sound stages, and HD video equipment. Projects I
contemplated, but never had time to explore in this media candy store, included
dramatic TV and radio shows that would have returned me to my first career:
writing and producing television.

Multiplayer Game Design �

Unfortunately, there was one drawback with the upgraded facilities. The
furniture in Room 226, where I taught a number of classes, was not nearly as
flexible as the older-style classroom in Ballantine (see Figure 6.1). Gone were the
chair desks, replaced by melamine tables not really conducive to lugging
around

a fact I learned early on when I assisted in turning the room from a
classroom into a square of tables for faculty meetings.

—

When word got out about the first multiplayer classroom, we had students
asking to sit in at least for a class or two. When students heard another
multiplayer class would be offered in the spring, we had to turn people away. As
it was, Room 226 also was not built to handle the 40 students we managed to
cram in. Every chair in Figure 6.1 was filled.