Over the last few years we have seen the rise of "serious games" to promote understanding of complex social and ecological challenges, and to create passion for solving them. This project-based course provides an introduction to game design principals while applying them to games that teach. Run as a hands-on studio class, students will design and prototype games for social change and civic engagement. We will learn the fundamentals of games design via lecture and extensive reading in order to make effective games to explore issues facing society today. The course culminates in an end-of- quarter open house to showcase our games. Prerequisite: CS147 or equivalent. 247G recommended, but not required.
A game that I enjoy is Grand Theft Auto. The game architecture leverages parallel arcs in the form of three distinct parallel story lines, as players can make free-form decisions or follow structured missions by switching between all three worlds/dimensions independently. This unique parallel storytelling approach which I haven’t found in many other games allows one to experience multiple interconnected narratives simultaneously, all while making decisions that may not affect the story arch of another dimension.