Game Design Fundamentals

I have just completed my first month at Full Sail last week. My first class was Game Design Fundamentals instructed by Michelle Wess with lab specialists Ian Davis, Chad Coup and Angela Patane. This class has been the most fun I ever had attending college. It is not to say that there was not a lot of work on the contrary we were assigned PowerPoint presentations, Design Analyses and even a Preliminary Game Document for a game we created in groups through the entire month. Because the material was what everyone was interested in, it was easy and fun to do the work

The lectures and labs were very interesting. We discussed story structure, character types, level design, player interactivity, marketing and working in the industry. The instructors and lab specialists were very helpful and explained things in ways that we, as gamers, would understand easily. They gave us great feedback and were always positive. They made us do many teambuilding exercises which would help us grow as a team. By the end of the class everyone felt like good friends including the instructors.

The guys I was assigned with are really cool and hardworking we did not have many differences in our vision of our game, which had to consist of 3 randomly assigned items and a random genre. On the last day of class we had to pitch our games to the class as if they were potential investors. Even though 1 of our members overslept and we had to go on without him we still got the majority of the class vote and won the contest (much to our shock). We were not mad at him because we all knew that even if we did not win we did a lot of work together and had a blast doing it.

The skills I have learned in this class have encouraged me to work on projects outside of school and have really allowed me to get a feel for the industry. I know I am cut out to work in games and this class has proven my worth to myself. Even though I am aware that the workload will increase drastically I am up to the challenge because of this class.