I try and get my students to think like designers. And that actually means a whole number of different things. Um, but for example, it means learning how to think systemically. Learning how to look at some kind of system, whether it’s a game, whether it’s a poem, whether it’s the patterns of people crossing a crosswalk with the traffic, and try and think about that as a set of parts that interrelate together to form a whole. Um, and systems are all around us today. I mean, uh, we’re having this interview inside a house. That’s a certain kind of system. We’re also in a cultural system of the documentary as a cultural form, right. Um, we’re also the system of language to kind of toss our ideas back and forth as we, you know, speak, listen to the other person, formulate new thoughts, and communicate. So, systems are really all around us. But, obviously there’s more to that than becoming a game designer. There’s um, for example, the ability to communicate. So, the idea that you are communicating to your players. You’re - you have to communicate to your teammates as you work on a game together. You have to communicate to people that might give you money to make a game, your publisher, for example, or a curator who is thinking about including your weird arty game in a - in a - in a show that - that she’s putting together. So, so communication is important. Collaboration is a really important skill for - for - for game designers to have, too. Um, all of that said, there’s also rally a craft to game design. There is, um, a set of, uh, uh, a set of ideas that are really about becoming in tune with creating meaningful participatory experiences for players. In my, the classes that I teach, the introduction to game design classes, we don’t use computers, so the students make card games, board games, physical games, social games, and we study the fundamental principles that are common to all kinds of games. But, those are not intrinsic to digital technology. In other classes, of course, they’re - they’re learning about, you know, digital technology and game production. They’re learning about the history of games, a whole class just on, uh, getting them to play games from the, you know, millennia’s old history of - of - of games and human civilization. Um, and they’re also looking at games from theoretical perspective. So, they’re getting games from many points of view at the NYU game center.
