Learner Reviews & Feedback for Principles of Game Design by Michigan State University

This was a very good course, however the assignments were too long to complete in only a week.

It's a really good course but I feel like you need more time to really do the assignments, one week between assignments is kind of little time to do all the design. Sometimes the lectures are not directly relationed with the assignments.

The course is not bad, right? It gives you interesting texts to read, right? And explains a design process, right? Is it OK to say right after each sentence? (English is not my first language, right).

A lot was discussed, and many resources were offered, but I felt the general direction offered was too loose. When time came to do each week's assignment, I was not always sure how to execute.

Very interesting course. I am already familiar with software dev documentation, so a lot of it was not new for me. The style of teaching in the previous course was more pleasant for me. But I am well aware it is just a personal preference. Very good course indeed. Thanks!

I'm still not done halfway through but like others who have actual game dev experience in the forum, I've taught about dropping out but approach this course as if I'm taking a game. This lecturer keeps going round in circles and the fact that I have to endure his salesman style teaching in another course is something I'm still not sure if I'm going to be able to pull through.

I'm still trying to put aside his whole "I'm going to spend more than a minute convincing you why something is great for you apart from actually telling you WHY it is great ACTUALLY for you" but I find myself not paying attention and increasing the speed of the video up to x2. Since I've already paid for it, I might as well go through with it.

Certain points are great though, I still did learn a lot from this. Was definitely disappointed in the beginning as the previous lecturer was very good. But kinda got over his irrelevant points and found the important bits somehow.

Nice lessons, but the "teacher" use too often the word "right", what is really annoying. I hope you can

eradicate this terrible habit and fix the course materials after that.

A lot of conceptual stuff going on, I learned what's a high concept document, a game design document, and the importance of prototyping!

Very insightful course although the assignments were a bit redundant

This course is mandatory to design a good videogame.

My difficulty in completing this course is that I am having to actually develop a playable version of a game. The information in the course is excellent but it is taking more time than I have to develop the playable version of the game I used for the exercises.

The lecturer is very engaging and for the most part these lectures were valuable. A few of them bordered on "why are we talking about this?" though. Felt more like filler than actual value. I think this could have been condensed to three weeks without losing much.

This course has made me more thoughtful and analytical, about things I did not really look at previously. Plus I learned to use Twine, it is a great tool.

At the start, I felt this course was mostly uninteresting, irrelevant and unnecessary. Pretty much a waste of time. But as things progressed, I discovered there were lots of great theory and concepts introduced that play a critical role in how the game industry and professionals need to think and work.

My only complaint after having completed this course is that the instructors didn't do a good job explaining why this course should be taken. Once you're in and working your way through, you should see the importance. But on first glance it sounds irrelevant.

The course is great but there is some room for improvement. One awesome way to improve learner experience, I think, would be to provide one or two examples about what is expected to deliver for each activity (good/bad examples from previous courses, preserving anonymity?).

I know a lot of creativity is involved in the process, but sometimes I felt like I was wandering in the dark, trying to complete an assignment without knowing whether I understood appropriately the instructions.

This course has some great content and assignments that I'd never make myself do on my own, for that I rate the course highly.

I did find myself often wondering exactly what was expected of me on the assignments, and during lecture I'd hear "this is something to think about...", but not what I'd like to hear which is "here's what to do".

Overall a great fit into the game development specialization.

loving it so far

The course itself is nice, but everything about the peer-graded assignments for weeks 2-4 just doesn't work.

Great content and great teacher. But I found the assignments and the quizzes not that great. I reckon the questions and corrections were a bit subjective and time consuming.

Useful for making people think and analyze things and to develop new ideas, the methods used were quite interesting.

Another good course in the Game Design and Development specialization. I had a lot of fun making the prototype at the end.

Fun course although a little too conceptual for my liking.

There is a lot of writing here, but the course gives a better understanding of what is required outside of actually building a game

I learn a lot by doing assignments and reviewing other people's assignments. The important con of this course was some of its quizzes' questions which was ambiguous or badly framed.

Very helpful information with lots of solid, practical advise (prototype! test!) and a few important questions to think about (genderfication? accessibility?) when designing. Excellent learning experience for game design documentation. Quite worth the time and effort. Thank you!