Elective Title: "Analyzing User Feedback"
 
Blurb: "So you have a brilliant design on paper, but how do you evaluate whether it works out in practice?  There are many ways of getting user feedback, including surveys, focus groups, usability tests, and plain old playtesting.  This elective is about taking raw feedback data and analyzing it, reaching conclusions on both the game design and the feedback process itself.  Participants will try their hands at sifting through actual sample feedback from the real-time strategy game Age of Mythology and discuss their findings.  Discussion witll also include experiences with focus groups and playtesting in general, and the role it plays in game design. "


Mechanic and Theme

This elective will explore the relationship between game mechanic and game theme. Dice and swords, points and dollars, pieces and men; we will look at how games can be broken into two parts: a formal abstract system "under the hood" and a representational surface. Then we will see if we can put these parts back together in new ways. We will consider whether there is such a thing as a purely abstract mechanic and how themes operate as part of a game's formal system. In the design exercise, rather than trying to find a perfect fit between mechanic and theme, we will look for surprising and unexpected possibilities by randomly pairing up themes to mechanics.

"Analyzing Information as a Commodity"

Information can be an ambiguous resource in a game. In a group discussion format, 
we will compare the value of information to the value of other game resources. We will look at 
single-player games and multi-player games and how we can modify a game's rules 
to affect the valuation of information. 

RESOLVING AESTHETIC CONFLICTS

While it is useful to construct aesthetic models of games as a tool to understand gameplay tuning, constructing the aesthetic model is not the same thing as tuning the game.  In this elective, we will consider a specific and important application of aesthetic models: the identification and resolution of conflicting gameplay values.

Games as Conflict

All games represent a conflict of some kind.  Typically, the kind of conflict found in games is a military conflict over territory, an economic conflict over resources, or a knowledge-based conflict over a type of information.  In this workshop, we're going to explore the relationship between games and conflict by conceiving and designing forms of conflict not normally found in games.  Can we make a game about a food fight?  Or an argument?  Or how about seduction and intrigue?  Come and find out!

Elective title: Physics-based Gameplay

Physics is occasionally heralded as a kind of miracle technology,
magically creating gameplay and realism while saving development time.  In
practice it's a double-edged sword. If not used creatively it can take
over a game and cause more problems than it solves.   In this workshop
we'll be discussing the pros and cons of physics and creating notional
games that use it effectively and creatively.  And playing with toys.

Dramatic Tension in Multi-Player Games

As designers, how do we maintain dramatic tension through to our game's conclusion? This does not tend to be a fundamental design challenge in the creation of many single-player games where the player-character fights many lesser opponents. However, multi-player games, especially those over the Internet, pose some serious design challenges, especially where opponents compete head-to-head.
