Introduction to Game Design: Game Systems and Balance

This introductory course is based on the Game Design & VFX School at LaSalle College’s Vancouver campus, crowned the #1 undergraduate school in Canada for video game design by the Princeton Review 10 years in a row. Game designers create the ideas and worlds of games—they design the environment, characters, game mechanics, goals and user experience. Successful game designers do this by applying the fundamentals of game system design and logic. This course explains what game system design is, how it works, and how it relates to game mechanics, rules c reatio n , and logical thinking and reasoning. Game balance is a crucial component of game design and development, so in this course we will focus on what game balance is and why it is important in terms of its relation to simplicity and complexity, dominant strategies, and skill and chance. This course also dives into game balancing tools you can use to make your game a success, including risk and reward, physical and mental challenges, gameplay duration, and freedom versus control. * 3b:T

• Use the different categories of game mechanics.
• Design good rules for your games and apply logical thinking to game rules.
• Achieve game balance through various tools, including fairness, challenge versus success, simplicity and complexity, dominant strategies, and skills versus chance.
• Leverage other game balancing tools to affect game design and user experience.