Video Game Curriculum

[ArcaneLurker]

What games would you write down as a must-have to play through on any videogame development curriculum? With a particular focus for gameplay, scope and depth?
Sundog: Frozen Legacy seems like a key early game to analyse and learn from, for example.

I suspect that such courses don't recommend games to analyse. In a better world, the curriculums for development would be more sensible and thorough.
Whether the industry is lacking the wrong types of people, with the right intelligence, or there's something mechanically wrong with what developers are taught (aside from political issues which are ubiquitous across the board in all education), there's no appreciation for the fundamentals of what can make a game great.
There's such a poor level of critical thought that the average developer can't seem to take any game and break down what key elements are most likely to have drawn people in and kept them playing.

Think along the lines of examples that had a disproportionate amount of success, even if they were made by small dev teams, and look at what features and priorities kept people coming back to them. Since the focus is on gameplay, and using compelling systems to push your games, modern games are largely irrelevant, as they tend to rely on technological features and visuals.
Of course each genre of game will have it's own key examples to look into.

[Just Locus]

Quake 1 - I was suffering from an FPS burnout until I started on it.

The game's level design is simply unmatched and the way it consistently makes the admittedly basic gameplay fun, is absolutely worth studying.

[Tadeusz]

Limbo of the Lost - it's a good (and funny) example how not to design quests For a good example I would suggest Myst games.

[Demonic Fate]

Actual games are more relevant to a design course. For development, a playable open-source tech demo to tinker with will be 1000x more relevant than any packaged game.

For game design, games that are as minimal as possible while still clearly representing 1-2 important concepts. They don't need to be masterpieces, just well-executed and made of as few pieces as possible. Off the top of my head and in no particular order:

Super Mario Bros. Doom. Portal. Ozymandias. Amnesia TDD. Minecraft. Papers, Please. Minesweeper. Flappy ******* Bird.

RPGs are tough to choose because they inevitably end up having a ton of moving parts and a less focused design. I'd consider Mount and Blade, Knights of the Chalice, Disco Elysium as being some of the most tightly focused RPGs to study.

[Sword-of-Yakub]

I guess any game that was in one way or another a pioneer for the particular thing the devs were going for and without mingling with other genres (or as little as possible, at least). Age Of Empires II/Cossacks, NetHack, Descent: FreeSpace, SimCity, The Sims, OpenTTD, Capitalism... Any game that represents the purest form of its genre.

[Element]

Rollercoaster Tycoon

[Acrux]

RPGs are tough to choose because they inevitably end up having a ton of moving parts and a less focused design. I'd consider Mount and Blade, Knights of the Chalice, Disco Elysium as being some of the most tightly focused RPGs to study.

I'd suggest going back even further to focus on Wizardry and Ultima. Most modern rpgs are descendents of those at some level.

[ArcaneLurker]

Limbo of the Lost - it's a good (and funny) example how not to design quests

I think watching something like this would be enough torture for them, to get the point across. That makes modern asset flips look amazing.

For a good example I would suggest Myst games.

Great example for the Point-and-click Adventure genre. Not sure there would be any others that beat it.

[Irenaeus]

The Mystery of the Druids

[Acrux]

Stones of Arnhem

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Bad idea. Same problem with the "book canon" where teachers forced you to read stuff like the Odyssey, Frankenstein, To Kill a Mockingbird, and everybody hated it. Or "movie canon" where you are "supposed" to watch Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Alfred Hitchcock and Kubrick films, etc. Let people play what appeals to them and not make them homework and slog through games that don't appeal them just so they can get cred.

[ArcaneLurker]

Bad idea. Same problem with the "book canon" where teachers forced you to read stuff like the Odyssey, Frankenstein, To Kill a Mockingbird, and everybody hated it. Or "movie canon" where you are "supposed" to watch Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Alfred Hitchcock and Kubrick films, etc. Let people play what appeals to them and not make them homework and slog through games that don't appeal them just so they can get cred.

Suffering builds character. It's not about cred it's about developing an understanding & appreciation for what came before.
In a literary course, if you tell these ***** to 'read what they like' they will all read some garbage erotica or low fantasy, instead of something that has an important lesson to draw from it.

If you can't understand gameplay from analysing key games, then I WANT you to be filtered out of development.

[Jordy]

Flappy bird.

[J1M]

What is the aim of this course?

This question is a bit like asking what to teach in one course that will cover all of math. Whereas in real life you take it for a dozen years just to finish the tutorial and reach the hub that lets you branch out to calculus, graph theory, geometry, etc.

If I was to convey one game design idea in an introductory course it would be this: "the game takes place inside the player's head".

[Tangerine]

I agree with @J1M that it's more important to teach principles than specific games, but I do think there's value in taking apart a game and analyzing why it works.

[Roderick]

Arcade games

[ArcaneLurker]

What is the aim of this course?

Preparing the younglings to be slaughtered for working in the industry or developing their own game. There's no specialisation in the industry, so it's better to learn something about the gameplay from various types of computer games. It's pretty easy to pick out key milestones, when you see it, but it's unlikely that younger generations will see it unless they're shown it.

It's not really serious, just interested in seeing what kind of obscure retro games might pop up. It's disappointing if people give generalities.

[Oyster Sauce]

[J1M]

What is the aim of this course?

Preparing the younglings to be slaughtered for working in the industry or developing their own game. There's no specialisation in the industry, so it's better to learn something about the gameplay from various types of computer games. It's pretty easy to pick out key milestones, when you see it, but it's unlikely that younger generations will see it unless they're shown it.

It's not really serious, just interested in seeing what kind of obscure retro games might pop up. It's disappointing if people give generalities.

For a general interest course I would find the first janky example of each genre and discuss what about those experiences was compelling and interesting enough to spawn a new genre. Several genres are essentially "dead" now, so that would be another interesting topic to explore. Were their fun elements incorporated into another genre that did them better? (2D platformer -> 3D adventure) Did input devices change in a way that turned audiences away? (Flight sticks replaced by gamepads) Did a competing product from outside of gaming offer the same thing in a more accessible way? (MMO replaced by smartphone)

[NotAI]

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Well done game that holds up today, based around a few simple principles, that got unlucky with sales as usual

Would rather play it today than Half Life 2.

Which brings us to the other game for the curriculum:

Half Life

[WhiteShark]

Someone mentioned Nethack above, but it may be better to go all the way back to Rogue. I haven't played it, but it did spawn the genre!

RPGs are tough to choose because they inevitably end up having a ton of moving parts and a less focused design. I'd consider Mount and Blade, Knights of the Chalice, Disco Elysium as being some of the most tightly focused RPGs to study.

I'd suggest going back even further to focus on Wizardry and Ultima. Most modern rpgs are descendents of those at some level.

Little known fact: RPG actually stands for wizaRdry Plagiarizing Game.

[Kain]

"Metal Max 2 Reloaded" for NDS

One of the best RPG I know.

Post-apocalypse, wild west atmosphere, dual classes, unique side quests, unique monsters with unique drops, great pacing, customizable tanks, cars, motorcycles with many combinations.

Downside: The game is made with a male MC in mind. Playing as a female MC can cause discomfort in certain side quests and joke endings.

[A Chinese opium den]

Downside: The game is made with a male MC in mind. Playing as a female MC can cause discomfort in certain side quests and joke endings.

****** btfo.

[Acrux]

"Metal Max 2 Reloaded" for NDS

One of the best RPG I know.

Post-apocalypse, wild west atmosphere, dual classes, unique side quests, unique monsters with unique drops, great pacing, customizable tanks, cars, motorcycles with many combinations.

Downside: The game is made with a male MC in mind. Playing as a female MC can cause discomfort in certain side quests and joke endings.

You were going to mention a downside?

[Kain]

You were going to mention a downside?

There is no downside if you play as a male MC. But playing as a female can turn you into a lesbian in all the marriage joke endings. And your female charm can only work in battle. Full female team is not recommended since you need positive masculinity to enter certain place(for side quest). I mean, the game gives you the option to play as a female character but not expand on that side, so the game still treats you as a male story-wise.

[Nemesis]

Wizardry 6-8, to instill the need for careful planning and research to make the best party possible going into the meat grinder.

[Just Locus]

I agree with J1M that it's more important to teach principles than specific games, but I do think there's value in taking apart a game and analyzing why it works.

There's no harm in doing both - in fact - it's better to do both, since teaching game design theory and giving tangible examples is the best of both worlds.
If I were to talk about the importance of nuanced movement mechanics in platformers, then Mario 64 would be the obvious example to give, and talk about how the levels accommodated the movement, etc. etc.

[rustys-name-is-kumar]

no point in doing this since most of them will go on to either work for established companies that make ****** modern games or become indie devs that make roguelites to annoyingly haunt everyones steam discovery queue

[NotAI]

Speaking of wizardry, another one I remembered:

Legend of Grimrock

Probably the best implementation of this genre, and it looked great for a game from 2012, did it not?

[Lich]

I didn't like the real-time dancing; it ruined the tactical part of the game for me. Grimoire is the best one I played in the genre, regardless of UI difficulties and anime elements.