In order to promote a deeper understanding of games, the NYU Game Center is offering this comprehensive course that reflects the various skills and disciplines that are brought together in modern game development: game design, programming, visual art, animation, sound design, and writing. In addition, the workshop will situate these disciplines within a larger context of game literacy and a historical and critical understanding of games as cultural objects.

Classroom lectures and hands on experience in state-of-the-art computer laboratories will all be used to bring these different educational vectors together into a coherent whole, the workshop will be organized around a single, long-term, hands-on, game creation project. Over the course of the 6 weeks, working in small groups under the close supervision of instructors, students will collaborate on the creation of a game.

As a creative constraint to help inspire them and guide their designs, the students will be given a theme to express in their game projects – the theme of New York City itself. This theme reflects both the unique geographical identity of NYU and also the status of urban space as a key element in many modern games, from Sim City to Grand Theft Auto. Students will consider what their city means to them, drawing inspiration from the material reality of their daily commute, the ethnic diversity of their home neighborhood, the physics of skyscrapers, the network topology of subways, or any other quality of the physical and cultural environment.

At the end of the workshop each group will have a finished, playable game.