Current offering: Fall 2025, taught by Bernhard Riecke

Join us for our Game Design Showcase on Thursday 20 November 2024 (details TBD)

On Thursday 20 November 2024, stu­dents from my Foundations of Game Design course (IAT 312) will show­case their final game design projects where they were tasked to design a (dig­i­tal) boardgame that is not only fun to play (addresss­ing what  Lazzaro  calls “People Fun”), but also “trans­for­ma­tive” or “pur­pose­ful” (aka “Transformative Fun”, what Lazzaro refers to as fos­ter­ing altered states): That is, apart from being fun to play, the game should also be meaningful/purposeful or add value by some­how chang­ing the player’s out-of-game behav­iours or per­spec­tives.  During the course, stu­dents reflected on topics that they care deeply about that could help create a better world, and designed a game to tackle that topic.

How to participate? Join us for in-person game demo/playtesting at SFU’s Surrey Campus in the Mezzanine, from 2 - 6pm

If you’d like to try out any of the games and/or chat with the game design­ers or instruc­tional team, join us from 2-6pm on the SFU Surrey campus, in the Mezzanine (up the escalator/stairs one flight), see direc­tions.

Documentation of prior course offerings and showcases from

• Spring 2024
• Spring 2023
• Spring 2022
• Fall 2021
• Summer 2021
• Spring 2021

Want to try out Games from prior classes?

type “IAT312” into the search field on the Tabletop Simulator site on Steam or through this direct link.

Course outline

Brief course intro video (spring 2021)

Course description

Welcome to IAT 312. This year, IAT 312 transforms into a vibrant, collaborative agile indie game studio.

In this course, you’ll expe­ri­ence what it’s like to work as part of a real-world pro­fes­sional game studio, design­ing deeply mean­ing­ful, socially enjoy­able, and trans­for­ma­tive “People Fun” games that engage play­ers at a deeper level. You’ll move beyond simply cre­at­ing enter­tain­ing expe­ri­ences to craft­ing games that foster mean­ing­ful social con­nec­tions, thought­ful engage­ment, and pur­pose­ful inter­ac­tions among players.

There’s no TA this semes­ter, plac­ing cre­ative lead­er­ship directly into your hands. Through iter­a­tive agile sprints, you’ll rapidly pro­to­type and test your ideas in teams, learn­ing how to effec­tively manage your projects like pro­fes­sion­als. You’ll reg­u­larly give and receive con­struc­tive peer feed­back, refin­ing your designs to achieve mean­ing­ful player experiences.

Instead of overly rely­ing only on tra­di­tional numeric grades, this course embraces a reflec­tive, coaching-oriented approach to assess­ment. You’ll reg­u­larly reflect on your design process, team col­lab­o­ra­tion, per­sonal growth, and cre­ative insights, sup­ported through coaching-style dia­logues and nar­ra­tive self-assessments. The goal is gen­uine growth—not numeric grad­ing stress, although we might need to do reg­u­lar micro-quizzes given that there won’t be any TA.

You’ll develop skills highly valued by pro­fes­sion­als: agile project man­age­ment, effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, reflec­tive prac­tice, col­lab­o­ra­tive team­work, and crit­i­cal thinking—including thought­ful use of AI tools as col­lab­o­ra­tive thought partners.

By the end of the semes­ter, you’ll have cre­ated not only inno­v­a­tive game projects but also professional-quality port­fo­lios show­cas­ing your growth as design­ers, col­lab­o­ra­tors, and reflec­tive learn­ers. Together, we’ll foster a joyful, sup­port­ive studio cul­ture that trans­forms chal­lenges into authen­tic oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth, mean­ing­ful cre­ativ­ity, and play­ful exploration.

No pro­gram­ming or Unity/Unreal knowl­edge is required. All games cre­ated in this course will be or mimick analog/board games (using Tabletop Simulator).

Let’s have fun, learn deeply, and create pur­pose­ful games that play­ers gen­uinely love to expe­ri­ence together!

Intended learning outcomes

The course is intended to sup­port you to gain both prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence with and a crit­i­cal under­stand­ing of the foun­da­tions of game design in spe­cific con­texts. Specifically, by ful­fill­ing the require­ments of the course you will be pre­pared to accom­plish key tasks in 4 main game design areas:

1. Game Design Basics:
   1. Explain and crit­i­cally reflect on games, and the char­ac­ter­is­tics and fea­tures of dif­fer­ent types of games includ­ing their com­po­nents, mechan­ics & rules, dynam­ics, and aesthetics/UX/fun, the “Magic Circle”, and what makes for a com­pelling game
   2. Analyze and argue what makes for a com­pelling game (or not) and why people like to play games
2. Game Design Frameworks & Psychology
   1. Compare and con­trast dif­fer­ent frame­works and under­ly­ing assump­tions, and deter­mine how and when to use which frameworks
   2. Explain dif­fer­ent player types and psy­cholo­gies, how they affect their game­play, assump­tions, and pref­er­ences, and use this knowl­edge to improve game designs
3. Game Design Process:
   1. Explain and effec­tively uti­lize game design best practices/processes/frameworks/mechanics, and explain how you did this when design­ing sev­eral games in teams. This includes typ­i­cal game design phases such as ideation, pro­to­typ­ing and play test­ing as the base for an iter­a­tive game design cycle
   2. Analyze, dis­cuss, and cri­tique games using appro­pri­ate ter­mi­nol­ogy, and pro­vide well-structured, con­struc­tive, and useful feed­back (e.g., after playtest­ing or game pitches).
   3. Discuss the dif­fer­ence between game cri­tiques vs. playtest­ing, and demon­strate why, when, and how to use either of them effec­tively to improve your game and design process
   4. Effectively demon­strate and reflect on how to effec­tively com­mu­ni­cate your game across dif­fer­ent stages (from early pro­to­type to final game), to dif­fer­ent audi­ences (both inter­nal and exter­nal), and using dif­fer­ent pre­sen­ta­tion for­mats (incl. writ­ten instructions/rule sheets, pitches, game design doc­u­ments (GDDs), and game videos)
4. Game Design Teams:
   1. Reflect on and apply suit­able processes and team-based, col­lab­o­ra­tive prac­tices used in game design includ­ing ideation, pro­to­typ­ing, iter­a­tive revi­sions, and playtest­ing as the base for an iter­a­tive design cycle to a game design project.
      1. Specific processes cov­ered in this class may include struc­tured team brain­storm­ing (affin­ity dia­gram­ming), mood­boards, inspi­ra­tion analy­sis, Razor & Slogan, Play Matrix, playtest­ing scripts, struc­tured game critique/analysis, and Agile project management)
   2. Explain what makes a good game designer, and why and how they often work in teams
   3. Reflect on your own and others’ assump­tions, lenses, beliefs, what people really care about, and pref­er­ences about games/playing, and how do they affect game design and teamwork
   4. Explain and uti­lize a tool­box of how to  foster a col­lab­o­ra­tive, con­struc­tive, and sup­port­ive team cul­ture and process, includ­ing pat­terns of think­ing and behav­iour that sup­port effec­tive teams, as well as spe­cific  tools, tips, processes and frame­works (incl. Agile) that might be useful
   5. Find ways to effec­tively address chal­lenges that can occur in team-based envi­ron­ments while being respect­ful and con­struc­tive. (This could include col­lab­o­ra­tively resolv­ing chal­lenges that com­monly occur in team-based projects, such as bal­anc­ing between leading/following, com­mu­ni­ca­tion chal­lenges, con­flicts that arise, ensur­ing all team mem­bers con­tribute mean­ing­fully, engag­ing all team mem­bers, ensur­ing all care for the project and each other, get­ting people on the same page, and fig­ur­ing out a shared vision/purpose that all can care about).

Course-level educational goals

The course should help you gain prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence with and a crit­i­cal under­stand­ing of:

• The exist­ing attempts to ana­lyze the psy­chol­ogy of play­ers and how it affects game design and consumption
• The process of game design and its com­po­nents such as pro­to­typ­ing and play testing
• Some of the dimen­sions along which to think about game design and cri­tique exist­ing designs, such as art style, nar­ra­tive and game balance
• A subset of the mech­a­nisms avail­able to accom­plish game design goals, such as reward sys­tems and eco­nomic systems

Delivery Method

This course will include a weekly live lec­ture (2 hours) and a workshop-tutorial aka col­lab­o­ra­tive agile indie game studio (4 hours) com­po­nent. The course will be deliv­ered via in-person instruc­tion (if all goes well). Students are expected to par­tic­i­pate in:

• syn­chro­nous activ­i­ties during the sched­uled course times. This includes a live, inter­ac­tive lec­ture with demon­stra­tions, dis­cus­sions and stu­dent group presentation/discussion on assigned topics.  In the workshop-tutorial, stu­dents will prac­tice and apply the con­cepts of the lec­ture in play­ing, cri­tiquing and design­ing sev­eral games
• asyn­chro­nous activ­i­ties (e.g., inde­pen­dent prepa­ra­tion before the lec­ture, team­work, peer work etc. to pre­pare each week and to pace your­self care­fully in order to stay on top of the activities/assignments and to get the most from the class).

The learn­ing envi­ron­ment will be active, sup­port­ing, and will afford oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents to strengthen knowl­edge, skills, and feel a part of a com­mu­nity.
you can find more infor­ma­tion and examples/videos of prior course projects at the course web­site http://ispace.iat.sfu.ca/riecke/teaching/iat312/

Teaching/Learning Activities

these include:

• Interactive lec­tur­ing and demonstrations
• Flipped-classroom activ­i­ties: e.g., stu­dents are asked to watch online tuto­ri­als & do read­ings at home so they can come to class pre­pared to do a short quiz, dis­cuss and apply the mate­r­ial, and fill out the weekly JiTT online assignments
• Tutorial ses­sions
• A team project made up of sev­eral team assignments/presentations that cul­mi­nate in a final group project report/presentation and project video
• Group dis­cus­sions (in-class and online chat– and dis­cussing forums)
• Short in-class writ­ing and other activities
• Weekly read­ing and short writ­ing assignments
• Several short stu­dent team presentations
• Peer feed­back and evaluations

Main textbook

• Fullerton, T. (2024). Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games (5^th Edition). Boca Raton, FL: A K Peters/CRC Press.
  This is our main text­book, so make sure you have access and get your own copy (dig­i­tal or print, what­ever you prefer) by the first week of the semes­ter, as we’ll read through most of the book. You should be able to access the book it online through the SFU library.

Additional read­ings will be pro­vided through Canvas.

Software used for game design & playtesting: Tabletop Simulator

Based on prior stu­dent feed­back and rec­om­men­da­tions, and to facil­i­tate rapid pro­to­typ­ing, be resilient towards having to poten­tially switch to online teach­ing, and to reduce the need to pur­chase phys­i­cal pro­to­typ­ing mate­ri­als for design­ing your own games, we will use an online board game sim­u­la­tor in this course, the “Tabletop Simulator” https://www.tabletopsimulator.com/about..

Course assign­ments will be taught and demon­strated with this soft­ware, and other soft­ware will not be sup­ported by the course. You can also use this soft­ware for rapid pro­to­typ­ing and design­ing your games in your teams, and it also works really well for online and dis­trib­uted playtest­ing (and of course gaming just for fun), and shar­ing your final games online. Thus we strongly rec­om­mend that you pur­chase, down­load, and install your own copy of it before class starts, see link above or directly from Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/286160/Tabletop_Simulator/.. it runs on both Windows and MacOS and cur­rently costs CDN$ 25.99 (if you team up with others there’s also a reduced cost). The soft­ware has a lot of excel­lent online resources and tuto­ri­als avail­able at https://www.tabletopsimulator.com/about. Note that to min­i­mize your extra costs for this class, we chose a text­book where our library pro­vides free online access.

To see and try out prior games from my IAT 312 course you can enter “IAT312” into the search field on the Tabletop Simulator site on Steam or through this direct link.

Weekly Structure

The course will apply a “flipped” approach to learn­ing. This requires you to pre­pare each week and to pace your­self care­fully in order to stay on top of the activities/assignments and to get the most from the class. Each week it will go some­thing like this:

Preparing Before Lecture

You will begin the week by check­ing the weekly plan and your tasks on Canvas, and then watch­ing short, online tuto­ri­als, lec­tures, or other videos related to this week’s topics; then you will be invited to do the weekly read­ings that will cover topics of the week. You will use a read­ing guide/JiTT ques­tions to help you focus on key aspects of the read­ings, to answer key ques­tions that will help you to under­stand the ideas in the read­ings, and start apply­ing them in the JiTT (“Just in Time Teaching”) online short weekly assign­ments. We will also ask you about any “muddy points” or ques­tions you might still have after going through the videos, read­ings, and JiTTs. This will be done before the in-person lec­ture and will help us decide what aspects to focus on specif­i­cally in the “lec­ture”.  Pretty much each lec­ture will begin with a short quiz to indi­cate how well you have under­stood the con­cepts in the read­ings and videos.

We will assist you in form­ing small study groups for those inter­ested to help you digest and reflect on the mate­ri­als before class, and have people to dis­cuss the topics with (as that can some­times be a chal­lenge in online teach­ing). We will also have a course slack chan­nel for online dis­cus­sions and Q&A.

Engaging in the Live Lecture where we discuss and apply the material

The lec­tures will be inter­ac­tive and include small group dis­cus­sions,  demon­stra­tions, stu­dent pre­sen­ta­tions and feed­back ses­sions, and instruc­tion on key ideas. Parts of the lec­tures may be recorded for review. It is impor­tant to real­ize that the lec­tures will focus on key ideas and appli­ca­tions and will not be a re-teaching of con­tent found in the read­ings and videos. You are required to read and pre­pare for the live lecture.

Participating in the Tutorials (aka Studios, Labs, Workshops or WKS)

Following the live lec­ture each week there is a work­shop aimed to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for prac­tis­ing and apply­ing the knowl­edge and skills of game design. The work­shops will include small group learn­ing, team activ­i­ties, game playtest­ing, and peer feed­back in par­tic­u­lar on the game design projects. Teams may be called upon to do short pre­sen­ta­tions or pitches of their game ideas and receive feed­back from peers and the instruc­tor on their designs. The work­shops will be highly engag­ing and prac­ti­cal and require your full con­tri­bu­tion. They also require active par­tic­i­pa­tion in the prior lecture.

Documentation of prior (and ongoing) games that students created

• Spring 2024
• Spring 2023
• Spring 2022
• Fall 2021
• Summer 2021
• Spring 2021

Examples and details from the Fall 2017 course offering

For their final game project, stu­dents were asked to design a non-digital game that includes “Transformative Fun” aspects, also known as “seri­ous fun” (e.g., Lazzaro): That is, the game should be meaningful/purposeful or add value by some­how trans­form­ing the user, e.g., by pro­vid­ing a novel/meaningful user expe­ri­ence, dif­fer­ent perspectives/viewpoints, altered states etc.

Pictures from the final showcase on Dec 13, 2017

Sample Project Videos

Shelter   

ōBit   

StranDead   

Left Behind Bars   

False Illusion   

Rescue   

One Week to Refuge   

Questionnaire  

Some examples from the 2019 offering:

Obsessed with success

Student debt