Created: 2026-03-08 10:48
Tags: #notes #gamedevelopment

Setup

Materials:

White paper
Notebook paper
Graph paper
Note cards
Pencils (10)
Markers (4 packs)
Scissors (4)

🗒️Notes - STEM exploration Camp

There are areas of CS people aren't very interested in
And then there's game development
- We're going to talk about game development in a systematic way
- To be clear, this is going to be an offline game development
- Pencil and paper
- It would take way too long to get you started on Unreal or Unity or anything else
- But at the end, I will find a way to get you started down this path if you are truly interested

Who knows who this guy is?????
Who knows what these little squares are called?
- And why did they make art with these? Why not just draw straight lines?
How many people play mobile games?

Industry	Global annual revenue (approx.)	Source
Video games	$183.9B	Newzoo estimate for 2023 global games revenue
Movies (box office only)	$33.9B	Gower Street estimate for 2023 global box office
Music (recorded music only)	$28.6B	IFPI 2023 global recorded music trade revenue

Picture it: the year is 1989. I'm in 4th grade. For my birthday, I get this game
- And I'm obsessed with it for the rest of my life
- Flash forward 10 years, and I have a computer and I want to make improvements to this game
- Eventually, I want to make it into a different type of game
Anyone ever heard of a mod?
- Who has ever used a mod?
- Who has ever had an idea for a mod?
- Who has actually made a mod?

My platform was called MUGEN
This is when I first started to truly realize what it takes to make a video game
It's not just art and visuals
- There's math, physics, programming
- In other words, rules
- Everything needs to be quantified
- Everything needs to be systematic
Who knows what these little boxes are called?

I strongly encourage students your age and younger to get involved with modding
I honestly don't know what the mod is on the left
I do know what the mod is on the right--anyone ever heard of a game called Portal?
- Pretty cool concept, I hope they remake it

Notice this word "vanilla"--that just means unmodded

So let's think through game design in a systematic way

Look at these games, hopefully the graphics will be familiar to you
Now the art is simple and beautiful
But think about all the systems that have to be in place for the game to function
- Mario's lives
- World tracker
- P-meter
- Score
- Coins
- Time
- Item cards
- collusion detection
  - What happens if Mario jumps on a turtle?
  - what happens if the turtle touches him?
  - What happens if Link goes into the door?
  - What happens if Link touches the knight?

Item inventory
Life bar, magic, stamina
Collision detection
Water
Enemy AI

One of these men is the most successful and famous game developer of all time
Remember, games are a big business!

simplified version
Programmers make the most by the way

These are the rough drafts of characters
Notice the early versions
- Sonic as a bunny
- Cammy has rollerblades

Blender is a 3D art

Pixel art is retro AND current
Pixel art was born out of graphical limitations
- It went away, and came back!
- Much like vinyl records

UI art is a whole area as well
Imagine for example if you switched the UI of these 2 images
- This is what they call the "look & feel"

Blender Animation Tutorial

Again I ask you to think of everything in a game like this
Among Us:
- What are the systems? In other words, what are the rules?
Final Fantasy VII Remake:
- Leveling, life, damage, special abilities

Claude notes

What systems design is

The practice of designing the rules, mechanics, and economies that make a game function
The invisible layer underneath everything — when it works, players don't notice it
If art is what the game looks like and programming is how it runs, systems design is what it means to play it
Every number in a game — damage values, jump height, enemy speed, spawn rates — was a systems design decision
The best definition: systems designers make interesting decisions happen without the player noticing anyone designed them

Core concepts

Core mechanic — the one thing the player does over and over. Jump, shoot, build, sneak, match. Everything else in the game should support and complicate that one thing
Game loop — the cycle of actions the player repeats. In Mario it's run, jump, collect, reach flagpole, repeat. Every game has one whether it was designed explicitly or not
Economy — any system where resources are earned, spent, and balanced. Health, ammo, money, experience points, time. Economies create tradeoffs which create decisions which create gameplay
Difficulty curve — how challenge scales over time. Too flat and players get bored. Too steep and they quit. The curve is tuned through systems, not narrative
Feedback loops — positive feedback rewards success with more power, negative feedback catches players who fall behind. Most good games use both simultaneously
Emergence — when simple rules combine to create complex unexpected behavior. Chess has simple rules and effectively infinite gameplay. That's emergence

The tuning process

Systems designers spend enormous amounts of time adjusting numbers — called tuning or balancing
A weapon that does 10 damage versus 12 damage can fundamentally change how the game plays
Playtesting exists almost entirely to find broken systems — interactions the designer didn't anticipate
The question a systems designer asks constantly: "is this decision interesting?" A decision with one obvious answer isn't a real decision
If players always choose the same option something is wrong with the system

What systems designers actually produce

Game design documents — written descriptions of every mechanic, rule, and value in the game
Spreadsheets — seriously, a huge amount of systems design happens in Excel or Google Sheets before any code is written
Balance documents — tables showing how every weapon, character, or ability compares to every other one
Flow diagrams — maps of how players move through systems and what triggers what
Tuning builds — versions of the game with specific numbers adjusted for playtesting

The skills it requires

Mathematical thinking — not necessarily advanced math but comfort with ratios, percentages, and probability
Empathy — imagining how a player who isn't you will experience a system
Systems thinking — seeing how changes in one area ripple through everything else
Writing — design documents have to communicate complex ideas clearly to artists and programmers
Humility — your best idea will probably get cut or changed based on playtesting and that's fine

Why it's harder than it looks

Players are unpredictable. They will find exploits, shortcuts, and strategies the designer never imagined
Systems interact with each other in ways that are impossible to fully predict before playtesting
A system that looks perfectly balanced on paper often feels terrible to play, and vice versa
The gap between "this makes logical sense" and "this is fun" is where systems designers live

Examples to point to

Pokemon type chart — 18 types, dual typing, hundreds of matchup combinations, all from one well-designed table
GTA wanted levels — five escalating states each triggering different responses, tuned to let players feel powerful right up until they feel overwhelmed
Dark Souls death economy — dropping souls on death and having one chance to recover them is a single system that defines the entire emotional tone of the game
Among Us kill cooldown — adjusting one number by a few seconds shifts the entire balance between impostors and crewmates
Stardew Valley crop economy — every crop's growth time, sell price, and seasonal window was designed to create tradeoffs, all in a spreadsheet before any art existed

The connection to your workshop

The rules card students write during the paper sprint is a systems design document
Every If-Then rule is a system
When another team playtests their game and finds something broken or unfair, that's the systems design feedback loop working exactly as it should in a real studio
The question to ask students after playtesting: "was every decision you made as a player an interesting one?" If not, the system needs tuning

Now once you have your character art, they have to have a place to play right?
Here's some 3D and 2D examples
Marvel Rivals is a hero shooter type game
- The levels are very important in this type of game
Dark Souls, look at the level of detail in the buildings
- Interesting decision for your game design: are those buildings built separately? in separate space? or are the interiors on the same map?

Here's one of the most famous examples of all time
Hand drawn levels from the original Super Mario Bros.

Some games even need a story
- My favorite games don't really
- But some do!
This is a whole art it and of itself
- Video games are starting to be adapted into movies and TV shows, which is crazy to me

NES Programming
Unity Programming
remember--everything has to by quantifiable and systematic
- a lot of programming comes down to IF-THEN rules
  - who has heard of these?
Look at the picture of Mario
- If it's just a picture, or even just an animation, you can't play it
- I can make an animation of Mario stomping on a goomba, but you can't play it
- In order to play it, you have to design a system that keeps track of what?
  - Mario's position
  - His motion
  - His state: standing, ducking, running, jumping, underwater, big, small, racoon tail
Now look at the goomba
- It needs AI
  - not THAT kind of AI, it doesn't have to be as complex as ChatGPT
- but it needs to perform certain actions:
  - walk forward
  - collide--walk the other way or keep pushing?
  - walk off the edge
  - get stomped
- Some enemies have different abilities:
  - some shoot fireballs
  - some jump
  - some fly

Artists 45%
Programmers 27%
- make more $ than artists and designers
Designers 17%
Other 11%

OK its time to do game design
Remember, we're doing an "offline" game design
- but remember--Mario started out this way!

I need you to think about which role best fits you
- Or, which role is the least bad fit!
[Group Setup]
- Make 3 corners of the room; ask students to migrate toward that part of the room
- For 18 students:
  - 5 groups of 4-5 students
  - For each group of Artist, Designer, Programmer:
    - Ask students to remember the number you give them
    - Number them 1-5
    - Have all like numbers form a group together

Timing:
- use windows clock countdown
Sprints:
- Overall - [5 mins]
  - Title
  - Genre
  - Talk about your favorite games and what excites you, what kind of game you would like to build
  - Try to find some common ground
  - Remember, if you aren't thrilled with this concept, you have the rest of your life to make the one you really want to make!
- Building Phase - [20-40 mins]
  - Artists
    - Use either graph paper for pixel are or white paper for concept drawings
  - Designer
    - Use either graph paper or white paper for level designs
    - Use either graph paper or white paper for system design documents
      - win/lose conditions
      - life, combat
  - Programmers
    - Use note cards for hero enemy AI
      - Basically rules cards
  - Simple version might look like this:
    - Level map (designer)
    - Hero sprite (artist)
    - Enemy sprites (artist)
    - Rules cards (programmer)
    - And if you have more time--do more!
  - Remember, all the pieces work together!
    - System designs have to be programmed
    - Enemy sprites need AI
    - Hero sprites need systems designed around them
    - The level designer needs to know how high the hero can jump before he designs the level!
      - Is there double jump? is there a wall jump?

Pitch: [20 mins]

A lot of game designers start by making levels before they ever write code. Levels are "the playground" of a game 🏟️
Watching someone else play your level teaches you a lot. If everyone gets stuck at the same jump… that jump might be unfair 😅
Games with creators can last forever because players keep making new content 🔥
"Creator mode" games turn imagination into something other people can actually experience. That's powerful 🧠➡️🌍

each one of these is a job
- multiple jobs in fact! the bigger the game, the more of these jobs there are

Now the unfortunate part is that the engines it takes to make these games are only available to professional developers--that's really sad
- How many of you would actually love to use these tools if you could?
- OK good news--I lied, they're actually free and you can download them tonight and start using them.
- There's no excuse not to--in fact, do that. That's your homework.

Unreal Editor

Viewport = the big window showing the world (what you're building) 🎥
Assets = saved stuff like models, textures, sounds (assets = "game ingredients") 🧱🎨🎵
Super detailed scene = lots of objects + lighting + materials (materials = what surfaces look like, like metal or wood) ✨

Unity Editor

Scene/Game view = build mode vs play mode 🎥▶️
Hierarchy = a list of everything in the level (characters, lights, trees) 📋
Project/Assets = your files and game ingredients 🗂️
Code window = scripts (scripts = code instructions that tell objects what to do) 💻

Setup

🗒️Notes - STEM exploration Camp

❓Questions