Game Design. Creating a game from idea to prototype
4 months
Learn practical skills to work in a AAA studio or on your own project: learn to prototype engines, work with documentation, generate ideas, create game worlds and mechanics.
level of expertise:
beginner
beginner
instructor is an expert
4,80
Average grade of lectures and seminars
Based on a survey of 873 students as of 08/05/2023
$350
Price:
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About the profession
A game designer comes up with game mechanics and develops the rules by which the game world lives, such as deciding how many types of enemies there will be in the game and what their abilities will be. The work of a game designer is much like that of a movie director: in addition to the structure of the game, he also thinks about the game experience and decides what emotions each scene will evoke. Such specialists are in demand on the market and earn good money, and they can also cooperate on outsourcing with large global companies.
$40,000/year
Middle game designer
$100,000/year
Senior Game Designer
$20,000/year
Junior game designer
The course is suitable for you if you
You love games and dream of starting a career in gamemaking, but don't know where to start. You don't need any additional knowledge and skills - we will teach you everything.
Just started game design and want to structure your knowledge and learn new skills
Already working in gamedev, but want to pump up your skills and increase your value to your employer.
f you have questions, leave your contacts. We will contact you, ask you questions and determine your level. And then we'll tell you if the course is right for you and what kind of job you can get after the course.
Learn more about the profession
Tired of monotonous work and want to build a career in gamemade, but not familiar with game development.
You work as an indie developer and want to create a meaningful game, not just another timekiller.
What you'll learn
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For example, drafting TORs for programmers, as well as an AI combat passport and AI combat scenario.
Add dummies, animations and movement mechanics, as well as weapons and reloads for them.
Organize personal tasks and collaborative tasks with a team, communicate and work effectively in a real studio environment.
To do this, you'll have to understand the psychology of the players, calculate the balance correctly and work with math.
Writing documentation
Create prototypes in Unreal Engine 4
Teamwork
Pay attention to detail
TRAINING PROGRAM
We emphasize practice, so during the course you'll learn how to work from the pipelines of real studios, assemble a cool portfolio, and get constructive feedback.
Brief information about the profession of game designer and basic information about the course: how it is structured and how to turn in homework.
- About the course
- About the profession of game designer
- Homeschool Guide
- Game designer vocabulary
- Homework: analyze your favorite game
You will start to understand the psychology of the player - his needs and motivation. You will learn how to generate ideas for levels, find out what documentation is needed and create a design document.
- Ideas and their generation through brainstorming. How constraints help.
- A look at different types of gameplay design documentation and tools for working with it.
- About game mechanics in general terms and a more detailed decomposition of gameplay.
- Homework: create the first full-fledged high-level TOR documentation for our project.
You'll understand the game cycle, meta-mechanics, and level balance. Learn who a narrative designer is and how to make an interesting narrative.
Homework: identify the core loop in the games on the list.
- Narrative designer Konstantin Faizullin will tell what a narrative is and what its role is in a game, and will consider real cases from his personal experience and the game industry.
- Game designer Vladimir Agarev will talk about the mathematical component of games from the abstract and general to the specific and particular.
Homework: identify the core loop in the games on the list.
- Homework: add narrative details to your concept paper - setting, synopsis, main character, etc.
Familiarize yourself with prototyping and its types, and learn in which areas to apply them.
- Consider a board game as a way to test game mechanics.
You create a project, add a mannequin and animations, customize the movement system.
- Getting started with the engine, from introductory information to customizing our character.
- Homework: use UE4 Blueprints to build a smart home prototype.
You'll add prototype firearms, create documentation, work with third-party plugins, and customize reloading.
- Shooting in UE 4: add weapons, customize reloading
- Homework: add shooting mechanics to your project
Learn the gameplan of a game designer's work and how to write a resume and pass interviews. You will learn how to organize work in a team and how to form TOR for other departments.
Homework: write 3 technical specifications (TORs) for three different specialists: programmers, concept and 3D artists.
- Game Designer Pipeline
- Game Designer Resume
Homework: write 3 technical specifications (TORs) for three different specialists: programmers, concept and 3D artists.
Learn the roles, functions, and types of enemies in the game. You'll get documentation on them, familiarize yourself with hit reactions, and start working with AI.
- Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
- Part 1: The Soul-Body-Brain System
- Part 2: Refactoring and Hierarchy
- Part 3: Behavior Tree
- Part 4: EQS
- Part 5: Dovetailing and Firing
- Part 6: Death and Health Systems
- Fundamentals of Combat System Operation
You'll start working with the interface in the game and learn about the Blueprint Librarium, a library of ready-made game mechanics for games.
- Quest systems
- User Interface
- Creating game rules and menus
- Blueprint Librarium - ready-made Blueprint mechanics
Understand what a level-designer does and how to commiserate with them.
- Who is a level designer?
- Interaction between level and game designers.
- Mobile development theory from game designer Vladimir Agarev
- Together with Kirill Zolovkin we get acquainted with the work of a producer in game development, his interaction with a game designer and other departments.
- Interaction between a project manager and a game designer.
- Interaction between programmer and game designer.
- Master class on documentation.
- Bonus assignment: Voluntary Four-day Challenge to develop important skills of Game-Designer.
- Bonus assignment: Voluntary Ten-day Challenge on documentation drafting.
AUTHOR
COURSE
COURSE
There are no theorists among our teachers, only practitioners with many years of experience and renown in the industry. Sergey Prazdnichnov is no exception. You can read about his experience here.
Eric specializes in system and combat design. He started with mobile studios, then moved to Sperasoft. He worked on Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin's creed: Valhalla and other AAA projects from various studios.
Eric Mendez
Game designer
COURSE AUTHOR'S WORK
Post-training portfolio
$35,000/year
Game designer
Prototype game level
Weapon prototype on Unreal Engine 4
He'll have several locations and combat encouters - you can impress your future employer.
Like a shotgun. Model for prototyping with us.
Project skills
Detailed documentation on the boss
You will learn how to work in a team and also get acquainted with the pipeline of creating game levels to apply this knowledge on your project.
A passport, a pattern of combat behavior, a set of items for attacks, movements, and actions.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
This is one of the most popular engines on the market. It is free, quite powerful, and offers a large set of options "out of the box".
- We will already have the necessary assets ready - models, animations and so on.
- We study the necessary mechanics, look at examples from other games.
- We make simple prototypes for movement mechanics, shooting, melee weapons, simple AI with the help of blanks.
- We learn to give feedback, notice mistakes, make notes on what we'd like to get in the next iteration. There will be two or three such iterations on average.
We will give access to our shared project to everyone who completes the course. So it can be downloaded and used for any purpose if you want.
Completing the course itself, of course, does not guarantee employment. But it will help to prepare you for what awaits a game designer on medium and large projects.
Game design is NOT about programming. It is a set of rules and mechanics. We will work with simple prototypes using uncomplicated visual programming tools, and for more complex systems, we will write TOR for the programmer. This is how work on large projects is most often organized.
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