Conceiving a New Game: Tips for Aspiring Designers

A collection of tips for aspiring designers about the process of conceiving new games.

What you'll learn:

• Understanding what games are really about is a major goal
• Understanding that you must apply constraints to what you're doing
• Recognize the "natural" format for your game - even if you choose not to use it
• Understand what you can control, and what you cannot

This is a collection of tips for aspiring designers who are conceiving new games. It isn't as simple as you might think (at least, if you want to do well).

This was a free course with appropriate coupon, but Udemy policies have changed and Icannot offer it free any more. It is not typical of my courses, because it was originally free. One difference is that this is more like an anthology, many pieces written independently, than like a book written for one purpose. Though I’m the “author” in both cases.

So this class does not have the flow toward a specific result that those not-for-free classes have.

My not-for-free classes, having been planned from the beginning as coherent wholes, are fundamentally “better” than free or formerly free classes. Because of that difference between anthology and single-purpose.

What you get is valuable information, but in small packets. Like short stories rather than a novel.

The individual videos show how I go about things. I’m here to help you become a better game designer. I do that through conveying my experience to you, by asking questions, by providing the benefit of my thinking about these topics.

NOT by entertaining you. This is serious, game design IS sometimes work, not entertainment. It's fun to watch people playing your game, fun to create games, fun to make money (if you do), but it's not all fun.

Another difference between this course and others is that it's much shorter than my not-for-free classes.

Finally, the other major difference is that all of the videos in this class are available for free by other means: either my “Game Design” channel on YouTube, or as free previews from my not-for-free classes. There are about 150 videos currently available in that way. But the other 350+ are only available if you take those not-for-free classes!