Game Design Fundamentals

By Joshua Kinney and Thomas Winkley
Learn the basics of Game Design and the ideologies behind Swords and Shovels.
Play course overview
Course info
Level
Beginner
Updated
Jul 12, 2018
Duration
1h 26m
Table of contents
Course Overview
Course Overview 1m
Creating the Game Premise
Course Introduction 0m Evolving Your Idea 0m Going to the Game Premise 3m Summary 1m Communicating Your Idea 3m From Idea to Game Vision 4m Thinking About the Game Core Mechanics 5m
Planning the Game Development
Creating Achievable Time Estimates 1m Creating a Schedule for Your Game Project 4m Managing the Scope of the Project 6m Defining SMART Goals for Your Game 11m
Starting the Development
Creating the Pitch 1m Writing the Project Description and Vision 2m Thinking of the Gameplay 4m The Game Design Documentation 3m Thinking of the "Where" in the Game 3m The Final Details to Think of 1m The Iterative Design Process in Details 2m The Story of the Game and Its Characters 5m
Finalizing the Preparation Steps
Creating the Feature Sets 1m Influences on Your Game Design 1m More on the Story of a Game 2m Other Blocks in Your Design Document 3m The Importance of Feedback 3m Summary and Closing Words 3m Fine Tuning the Gameplay Document 5m Making Your Game Unique 10m
Description
Course info
Level
Beginner
Updated
Jul 12, 2018
Duration
1h 26m
Description

Have you ever had a killer game idea, but just aren’t sure how to spawn the baddies? In Game Design Fundamentals, you will get hacking and slashing in no time. First, you will get your idea cemented. Second, assess and create your timelines and resources. 3rd, build your Technical Design Document and finally, get your outline assembled, so you can start building your game.

About the author
Joshua Kinney
About the author

Joshua is a devoted games author at Pluralsight. For years Joshua was a key author behind Digital-Tutors' (now a Pluralsight company) popular game engine training. As a kid, he had a passion for playing video games, which eventually developed into a fascination with the process of game creation. The question of "How'd they do that?" led Joshua on a quest to learn to make these games himself. Ever since then, Joshua has devoted his life to creating games, as well as teaching others to build their own fantastic video games.

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Thomas Winkley
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Thomas Winkley is a gamer, podcast producer, programmer, and audio nut. He finds joy in showing others how to do cool stuff.

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Section Introduction Transcripts
Section Introduction Transcripts

Course Overview
Hey, my name is Thomas Winkley, fighting game junky and notably the producer on Swords and Shovels for Pluralsight. And I'm here with Joshua Kinney. Yep. I'm Joshua Kinney, the Unity master trainer at Unity Technologies. Also, the game designer behind Swords and Shovels. In this course, Game Design Fundamentals, we're showing you some conversation around how we approach the design of Swords and Shovels. And during this conversation we hope to show you how to approach creating a game design document and how you can begin to solidify ideas and turn them into visions and how you can create a viable product from here. Yeah. When you wrap the course up you will have a game design document either with our content or hopefully your own with your own ideas documented. And you should be ready to kind of take that down the road, start looking at some level design stuff, and also move into designing mechanics in the game.

You're the smartest person in the room

PROVE IT

Your team won't just close the skills gap

THEY'LL HURDLE IT