Overview of the 'Game Design Day'
On February 7, I attended ‘Game Design Day’, organized by the B&D Institute (short for Business and Design) as part of promoting its educational program in ‘Game Design’.
Despite the name, the program includes training not only for game designers but also for narrative designers, level designers, game artists, game programmers, and indie developers (however, the skills required for indie development are covered by all the previous specialties). Interestingly, the institute does not limit itself to training specialists for computer games but also prepares those who want to work on board games or role-playing games.
As for the ‘Game Design Day’ itself, it took place on the second floor of the institute, where an exhibition space is specially equipped for such events. Unfortunately, the plan is not displayed anywhere, but essentially there is a corridor in the shape of a T (the entrance is at its base), with classrooms on either side. The room for lectures is located at the point where the crossbars intersect.
This time there were four lectures, including a presentation of the game design direction by B&D Institute director Alexander Vetushinsky, running from 2 PM to 6 PM. Vasily Skobelev discussed how to work on game locations, Andrey Karelina talked about the economic/budgetary side of the project, while Vitaly Alexashin showed examples of how the context around a game influences the formation of in-game experience.
Actually, I only heard Alexashin's lecture, as I played the projects presented at the event during the others. I hope that recordings of them will be posted online later.
As for the projects, these were (with the exception of the game ‘Hour of Night Moscow Time’) student works from the 3rd year, which serve as topics for defense for graduates.
I tried ‘our answer to Ghostrunner’, quite a fancy quest-puzzle dedicated to conspiracy theories, an isometric puzzle called Beacon, where you had to activate different devices by emitting light waves, and another quest in the spirit of Monkey Island, which still needs a lot of polishing by its authors.
I also tried one tabletop game where I had to hunt animals with three other players. The rules were not very thought out — even the authors got confused about what to do in certain situations. However, considering that the game is still being developed, feedback from me and other players should help prepare everything by the end of the course.
I also peeked into the classroom where tabletop role-playing games were being demonstrated, but I didn’t play — even one session would have taken up all the remaining time. In total, there were two games there. One offered a system with time loops, which you had to break either by completing a mission from the deity that organized these loops or revealing the secrets of this deity to get rid of it. The second seemed more original to me as it was based on myths from the Caucasian region and used tarot cards instead of dice, which was especially suitable for character creation.
By the way, before the main event, there was also a workshop on creating a 2D platformer in Unity. Although regarding the platformer — that was somewhat overstated. In 3 hours (the intensive started at 11), Yan Basharin (a graduate of the faculty and the author of the game ‘Hour of Night Moscow Time’, which is a continuation of his graduation project ‘League of Enthusiast Failures’) mainly talked about the Unity interface and general issues of game design. So in the end, the actual project was limited to one location and a character jumping around it, albeit animated (Yan distributed the graphics for the project to everyone via local network).
This is how the ‘Game Design Day’ went at the B&D Institute. Overall, it was a good introduction for those who are unfamiliar with the gaming industry. They could learn about game development itself, as well as education in this area, and hear opinions from industry experts and see what kind of projects they could create within the institute’s course.