SARA VERRILLI: So the course evolution
has actually been more a refinement
than any really big evolution.
We've always had the four project structure.
We have done some juggling of the amount of time
allotted to each project, and what we're asking
for the goals for each project.
The first year we ran the course we
were kind of asking for a full game prototype
from each of the iterations.
And we were asking them to do everything
for every project, which was a little much to ask them,
although they did it.
I mean, they did it.
We've been refining each of the projects
as it goes to try to emphasize a particular thing we're
trying to teach, especially in the first three projects.
So the first project is prototyping,
and the second project is project management,
and the third project is now user interface
and interactions, feedback especially.
And then the fourth project remains tie it all together
into one overall synthesis.
Also, I think that our use of guest lecturers
has gotten better over the years.
We've been able to reach out to more people
and we've realized more and more the value
that they bring into the course, having people
to come in and talk, often agreeing with what we've said,
but giving a different perspective
and rooting it back into the game industry.
The students really like to hear that this is actually what's
going on in the game industry.
They're not just being taught this stuff in a course.
PHILIP TAN: When we first started teaching this class
we were primarily looking at the skills
that MIT students had and didn't have
when they came and joined our lab as undergraduate research
assistants.
And we found that there was a certain skill gap of things
that we had to teach every single new student who came.
Even though they may have been very skilled programmers,
they didn't understand what it was like to work in a team.
And so a lot of the genesis of this particular course
comes from just us trying to increase that pool of students
that we could hire as undergraduate researchers.
And of course, in the process of teaching a class
about making video games, a lot of the students
taking the class were also interested
in working professionally in the game industry.
And so we expanded the content on the skills
that you're going to need outside of MIT.
But we've always been very, very careful
to make sure that a student who comes out of that class
is in good shape to be able to get a research internship here
in our lab.
RICHARD EBERHARDT: So this semester, product three
is different than last year.
Last year the focus was on the aesthetics, so
think about how art and sound and visual combine to make it
an aesthetic experience.
That's not as important this year for our final project.
So we changed it to something that's
actually going to help them with their final project a little
better.
So this case it's user interface.
We're asking them to make these decision making
strategy-like games.
There's going to be a lot of elements on the screen
that a player is going to have to understand immediately
what they do and how they interact with each other.
So focusing on that user interface and that user
experience is important for us, and in
particular, feedback systems.
So because our theme is meaningful decision making,
if I'm making a decision, part of it
is I should know what the decision was that I just made
and how it affected the rest of the world
and how it affected my own play.
So that kind of reinforcement, that kind of feedback loop
is going to be very important for that third project.
PHILIP TAN: We've also brought back something
that we temporarily departed from,
and that's the idea of having a client, a real client who
has a need for the games that need to be made.
In reality, if you go out and work in the game industry,
you're not making games for yourself most of the time,
you're making games for someone else.
So in this case, we're going to be working with the Climate
Center and the Humanitarian Response Lab
here at MIT to talk about issues of climate change,
and more importantly about preparing for disasters.
We feel this kind of topical relevance
will make this class additionally more interesting
for certain students who aren't just
enamored with the technical challenges of making a game.
But I think this might also be the first time
that we specifically had the client give us
a design theme as opposed to a technology to work with.
RICHARD EBERHARDT: Yeah.
PHILIP TAN: So it's a departure, but in many ways
it's taking what we've learned from the previous two
iterations of this class when we didn't have a client
or when we had students working on a design theme rather
than a technology and putting it together this year.