Classes on Game Design: A Misnomer to Me

My wife is so great.   She and I were looking at Master’s programs that I can take to get my Master’s degree, and we were looking at an online program for Southern New Hampshire University.  Along with the normal Master’s programs such as Math and science and English was one my wife found: A Master’s in Game Design.

At first, of course, I was really excited, because number one I love Game Design and designing games and playing them, and number two I have always wanted to take some sort of class on that because it would offer me great insights as to how to do it better.  The closest thing I’ve found to a class on tabletop game design is this guy right here:  Classes on Game Design That, of course, and my own Game Design class I teach at my school during three weeks in January.

So this idea of a Game Desing Master’s sounded really great to me, although I had my fears.  My fear was this: nearly every time (I say nearly because once it hasn’t been: Classes on Game Design), nearly every time there has been classes or educational programs or Master's degrees on Game Design, they have been about Video Games, not tabletop games. As so it was with this.  The classes all turned out to be computing and programing classes, not classes about tabletop mechanics.

So I decided on an MA in English and Creative Writing Master's instead.  It's too bad that the Game Design class wasn't what I had hoped it would be.  There are still a lot of other resources out there (on the internet) that I can look at to teach me more about game design.  Links: Game Design Channel, Games Precipice, and Game Development.

The structure of my game design class is going to be a little bit different this year.  After teaching it for a year, I know what works, what doesn't, and what adjustments I need to make in it to have it be a better experience.  More on that topic in a later post.