Game Design

"understanding games - Kongregate"
http://www.kongregate.com/games/pixelate/understanding-games-episode-1

From all the reading material on our website, these games/readings were the best ones. I found that these mini informative games where the easiest to understand. The use of plain english and competitions to get the beginner to understand what game design is and why it's used was very clever and beneficial to both parties.

'Pulling the plug' - Lewis Pulsipher
Non digital teaching and learning

In this reading Lewis Pulsipher, breaks down what happens when beginners learn using non-digital vs electronic games. He states each step in bullet points and then goes into detail about why non-digital learning is better. He shows that if you start on non-digital its very easy to change a mistake where as with electronic it has to be done through coding and could take days, even weeks to change one minor fault. He tells us that people go into . game making wanting to create top quality looking games and don't really pay as much attention to the functionality. By expressing these concerns through the article, Pulsipher has shown people that functionality is more important then how 'pretty' a game is. Nobody will want to play a game that just looks pretty yet doesn't work.

"So your'e going to make a game for the first time?" This article by Lewis Pulsipher talks about what is the best way to appraoch making a game. It's suggested to rein in your ambitions as even the top developers take years to great A1 games. (they also have millions in the budget) Lewis suggests to start on a tablet game or a level of a game in order to get to know how the software works and how to improve functionality instead of focusing on the look of the game. Always test your game first before inflicting it on others!