Welcome back everybody! I am excited to once again launch the project blog and announce the topic for this year’s offering of Advanced Game Studio. This semester the students will be exploring asymmetry within their games – an imbalance between participants that must be resolved through the design. This asymmetry can take on many forms and mechanical styles such as “many versus one/few”, alternate perspectives, different abilities, or imbalanced information. The students have been working hard to establish their concepts and are now beginning to develop and test their creations.
This course was first launched in the spring of 2018 to give students the opportunity to work on game development projects with a longer design cycle. It is unique within the offerings available to students through IDeATe’s game design curriculum in that these students will focus on creating and refining the same project across the entire semester, leading to a more refined and complete final product.
Over the last two years, AGS has operated as one large studio, with students taking on a specific role similar to what one would expect in an independent game studio. This year, we are returning to the original configuration of smaller, multidisciplinary teams. The students are assigned to groups to balance their skillsets in programming, art, user experience, sound design, and production, and they will collaborate with one another to establish their design and bring this design to fruition.
Check back often as the team releases weekly progress updates, feature overviews, interviews, and as we post opportunities to participate in playtesting events.