Ten steps to game design

A few years ago, Alex Moseley and I wrote a workshop for the European Conference on Games-Based Learning, which presented a ten-step model of game design and exemplified the process by gaming the workshop. Since then, we’ve ran versions of the workshop, either together or on our own, at a whole range of conferences and events, and every time we’re asked if we can share the resources. The only reason we’ve not done so until now is because we’ve been planning to put together a proper web site and resource guide.

However, reality has got in the way, and while we still plan to put something more comprehensive together in the long term, I am putting the workshop resources here to make them available now. Please, if you do run the workshop for yourself, let us know how it went.

The resources here are for a 90 minute presentation for up to 32 participants, but it is very easy to adapt for different size groups and times (see workshop notes).

Ten-steps-presentation (ppt)
Workshop guidance notes (docx)
Participant handout (docx)

Game cards (all docx):
Constraint cards
Context cards
Secret cards
Story cards

2 Comments

  1. Michael Sutton

    Thanks for posting. I will try them out (with attribution of course) and provide feedback as soon as practical.

  2. Sandra Sinfield

    Dear Alex and Nicola,
    Thanks so much for sharing your resources! I used them the first time at our Look-Make-Learn conference, 12th May 2015 (http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/epacks/look_make_learn/) – when Tom Burns & I stood in for Alex cos sadly he could not run the session himself. I think that we managed okay…

    We ran the session again this week at a Staff Development Festival – also at LondonMet – and blogged about it here: http://lastrefugelmu.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/clmooc-make-3-games-as-lens.html This time it was better – knew the flow of it much better… The participants designed a cool game for learning – and then went on to think about other spaces in which to use your session – especially with Student Ambassadors – to get them to design induction and welcome events for other students. You are making such a difference! Thank you!

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