A re-cap of the lectures this semester: Weeks 1-5

Honestly, I didn't go to all of them. I never DO go to all my lectures. But I did attend a good part, even if I didn't show up to many tutorials.

Here's my very basic recall of what they attempted to impart to us this year:

Week 1:

Mainly Admin stuff and a recap of ITB750. This was quite brilliant since most of it had gone in one ear and out the other. This week covered motivations for play, types of play, etc.

Week 2:

The high-level concept. I really enjoyed this particular lecture and found the structure good to apply to my own game ideas, particularly for The Crystalweb Chronicles. There was a lot of information in this lecture and could have been split up over two weeks for better information retention.
However, the structure was useful and informative. More examples for recent games would have been great. Including Halo was a masterful touch, but not many of the game-players present that day had played Magic: The Gathering and only had a base knowledge.

Week 3:

Components of games, fine. I'm on board with that. Referring to the game as a magic circle was a bit, well, silly. After all, we're not five. We get the idea that a game is an independant system. It was good that the lecture went through the different types of system. I didn't particularly like dissecting soccer and chess. A simple game like minesweeper would have been better. Most of us don't play a lot of physical games so we just found it boring. The rules part of the lecture was far more interesting. This we can actually use.
The lecture started to get a bit off-subjects re: the more psychological background behind games. While useful, when designing a specific game concept it's not really relevant for a designer to stop what they're doing and say 'hang on, this doesn't actually apply to my audience'. Tough, you just remarket it for a different audience. I'm doing a marketing minor and even they know the qualities of repositioning. Sometimes I don't think that the lecturers actually get the idea of how to sell a game. Taking a marketing minor has really opened my eyes up to this.

Week 4:

Conflict in games and decision -making in games. Sounds great, doesn't it? I have to admit, the Pokemon Diamond/Pearl clip was most enjoyable (being an old fan of the ever-popular series). But the downfall of this part of the lecture was that Peta (I think it was Peta) didn't stick with this as the example, but went on to obscure examples from history (centipede and Gauntlet). Sure, great, we get the picture about different types of game conflict, but leave the old games to Game Design History for those of us interested. If the industry is all about new games, why aren't we learning about them?
I also didn't appreciate the idea that, as a woman, I didn't enjoy violence as much as my male counterparts did. What?!? My very first game for my playstation was Ratchet and Clank 2! Large guns and small furry protagonists! That kind of blatant sexism is annoying.
Decision making... what a nightmare! It reminds me of those 'Choose-your-own Adventure!' books I read as a child. Except every movement in a computer game require this decision making process. I have a new appreciation for the programmers who have to sit down and put everything in. God help them.

Week 5:

More decision-making... at least they split this topic over two weeks. Of course, it comes back to the age-old 'heads or tails' thing, doesn't it? A yes or no answer. Do I kill the bad guy, or does he kill me? The three types of decision-outcome relationships (Certain, Risk and Uncertainty) are especially applicable to the hazard and civic duty cards that my group is implementing in our game. There was more work on decision trees, including stuff on keeping uncertainty central in all games. Well, that's a bit silly! That blows the whole game-path theory right out of the window! First of all, they're saying that the player must follow a certain path, now they're saying that no, uncertainty is important for games! I mean, sure, a little bit of lee-way is all well and good, but no game doesn't have objectives. Otherwise it's just random, nonsensical actions.
As for all games having rules... unless you count gravity and other laws of physics as rules (and in space, even those wouldn't actually apply), sometimes play doesn't have rules. That's ITB750 stuff.
This wasn't one of my favourite lectures, as in my mind it seemed to undo all of the work done on games and thinking about 'fun' and 'play' in ITB750. Then again, that's just my opinion.