Experimental Game Lab

Experimental Game Lab is a production, design, and research oriented course in which students take an "experimental" approach to game development. Artists, designers, and theorists have used the adjective "experimental" in very different ways. We'll explore three specific visions of "experimentalism" in game design, by three contemporary artists: Mary Flanagan, Steve Swink, and Brenda Laurel.

This course is largely comprised of hands-on workshops, but is not tool-specific. Students learn and work with several game development tools: Twine, Stencyl, Klik & Play, ROM hacking, emulator-based speedrun tools, and the Unity 3D game engine. Students develop several small-scale experimental games, and one larger-scale videogame design research project.

Assignments

1. Adaptation
2. Bad game
3. ROM hack
4. Interface
5. Input/feel
6. No screen
7. Music/audio/performance
8. Design research project

Resources

• Anna Anthropy's Twine guide - a great overview.
• Porpentine's Twine Resources - includes some more advanced resources like CSS styling guide, and some helpful tricks like how to do "loops."
• Official Twine docs - the "adding code to your stories" section, in particular, has some useful reference tables.

• Official Unity Video Tutorials.
• Catlike Coding - in-depth, text-based C# scripting tutorials for Unity.

Unit 1: Critical play (focus on: Mary Flanagan)

• 2013-09-09: Adaptation: Translate something into a game; it can be another game, or a work in a different medium. Learn Twine.
• 2013-09-16: Bad games: Bad, abject, glorious trainwrecks, etc. Learn Klik & Play. Make a bad game, and then make a "Let's Play" video of it.
• 2013-09-23: Substitute: jon.satrom. Glitch games.
• 2013-09-30: Mods: Atari 2600 ROM hacking.
• 2013-10-07: Interface: Make a computer game that doesn't rely on the player's hands/fingers.

Unit 2: Experimental gameplay (focus on: Steve Swink)

• 2013-10-14: Input: Unity basics, game feel, input systems.
• 2013-10-21: More input: interpolation, drag, physics.
• 2013-10-28: No screen: More Unity, play on- and off-screen
• 2013-11-04: Music/audio: Work with musical timing, musical audio analysis (pitch & rhythm extraction), performative play. Learn hardcore Unity audio stuff.
• 2013-11-11: More music/audio.

Unit 3: Design research (focus on: Brenda Laurel)

• 2013-11-18: Introducing design research.
• 2013-11-25: Design research project dev.
• 2013-12-09: Design research project dev.
• 2013-12-16: Final critique