作者：Eric Zimmerman

简介

为什么你要看有关某人如何传授游戏设计课程的博客？我原先打算撰写一系列论文以便分享我的教学技巧——摘要和阅读材料、概念和方法，练习与作业。但是，在早期过程中我发现，我不仅仅是在撰写如何传授游戏设计课程。这种短篇实际上是在讲述如何学习游戏设计。（请点击此处阅读本系列之设计过程）

所以不要被这个标题误导了。这些短篇并不仅仅适用于教学人员，也适用于游戏设计师，设计系学生，游戏玩家，评论家和调查人员——任何希望更为了解游戏设计过程的人。更重要的是，你并不一定需要坐在教室里运用这些内容——你可以尽情将这些理念运用到自己当前的项目中，或者与好友及同事实践这些理念。

game-design(from photo.oregonlive)

我是一个教授游戏设计的设计师。我在游戏行业已经有20多年了，教龄也几乎与此相当，最初始于1995年和Frank Lantz一起在纽约大学的交互通讯计划中进行团队教学。从那时候开始，我就在麻省理工到南加州大学、赫尔辛基到北京的多个大学、会议和组织授课。我在这些时候都是把在Gamelab（游戏邦注：这是作者与Peter Lee联合成立的纽约工作室）与许多合作者制作游戏（数字游戏和纸上游戏）作为全职。

现在我又回到纽约大学担任游戏中心美术教授。20年前我开始教学生涯时，游戏设计还只是一个针对学术课程的奇怪科目。告诉别人你传授游戏设计课程听起来就像是一个笑话，好比是说你在教别人如何吃垃圾食品。

现在计多大学、艺术学校、技术学院都推出了与游戏相关的课程或学位，即使是小学也开始提供游戏课程或展开与游戏创造有关的课外活动。另外纽约市和芝加哥的小学还出现了一些寓教于乐的课程，从整体上来看，游戏已经从多个层面渗入了教育领域。

但比学校和大学更重要的是，我们所有投身于游戏领域的人——包括设计师、文案、玩家，都可以由此让自己训练得更棒。游戏设计并不只是考虑如何制作游戏，它还包括发布成品等事项。它更像是一种武术或学习一种乐器——是一种我们可以通过挑战难题而让自己逐渐强大的训练。我相信这一点，这也是我传授游戏设计的一个方法。

基本原则

在未来数周中，我将详细列出自己在授课过程中的特定训练和方法。但在本篇“序言”中，我想首先确立一些基础。在过去几年，我已经琢磨出了一种含有一系列关键理念的游戏设计授课方法。很显然，教学方法并不是只有一种，在此我仅列出自己的基本原则：

*通过制作而学习。我的游戏设计课并非演讲课，而是动手实践式的课堂，其主要活动就是制作游戏。偶尔我也会引进一些非正式的演讲或探讨理念，但大家做的主要事情还是设计游戏。

*学习即游戏，游戏即学习。在我的游戏设计课上，学生通常并不制作电子游戏，而是纸牌游戏，桌面游戏，实体游戏，社交游戏以及其他非数字游戏。我们会在电脑上或线下探讨所有游戏类型。但如果不涉及电脑游戏制作，我们就可以在短时间内设计出更多游戏，专注于游戏设计的基础，而不是执拗于技术和生产问题。

游戏设计的艺术。对我来说，游戏设计就像建筑学、平面设计或其他设计领域一样是一种学科。这并不意味着只有一种正确的设计方法——建筑设计就有上千种可行的方案，而是说我可以集中用一种技巧进行游戏设计。我们可以精益求精地学习和训练技巧，方法和理念，从而提高游戏设计水平。

多维理解。游戏并不只是一项技术，而是多项技术的集合。游戏并非交互故事，不是规则的系统，并不设计师的个人表达——它们是这些内容以及更多元素的集合。游戏设计师的挑战之一就是将游戏视为数学、心理学、文化、美学、故事、政治以及其他多种元素的合体。在设计过程中，我们所接触的任何与游戏有关的东西都是有用的。设计师需要了解解决某问题时需要运用哪种思维，以及该思维何时会成为一种问题。

实用才是王道。在设计领域，游戏设计并非一种科学。游戏设计的目标是不掩饰真实的本质。但这并不意味着我们不能拥有重要的定义、理念和想法——我在课堂上确实会引进许多理念。但是，游戏设计理念的“本质”就是实用性——它的价值在于解决问题。有些理念对游戏设计师的重要性超过了其他人，或者说解决问题对某些类型的重要性超过了其他游戏种类。正如Marvin Minsky所言，概念就是“让人思考的东西”。

衡量一个游戏设计概念对你来说是否“真实”，就要看它是否有助于解决问题。

理论很明确，实践很复杂。我们在游戏设计中掌握一个理念，就好像学习一个正确的摔跤姿势：60%的重量要集中在前脚掌，后脚跟要与对手保持45度等等。在训练过程中可以使用这种准确的技巧，但在实战过程中——当你被一个游戏设计问题所困时，我们几乎无法以清晰和正宗的方式运用理念。游戏设计的目标并非完美运用理论，而是创造成功的游戏（但何谓成功则取决于你自己的定义）。我们永远不要执拗于“正确”运用理念，实用性才是王道。

掌握设计师的思维。对我来说，游戏设计课程的唯一重要结果就是获得“像设计师一样思考”的能力。我使用这句话来囊括一系列不同的技能。这包括系统思考，给予和接收富有想法的批评，通过迭代过程创造游戏，与他人融洽合作的能力。

这只是我学习游戏设计的部分想法。我将在未来的文章中，进一步说明这些理念。

反对原教旨主义

让我先强调一点，我非常反对所谓的“设计原教旨主义”，该观点认为行业中只存在创造或理解游戏的唯一可行方法。设计原教旨主义有多种形式，例如“游戏就是讲故事！”“游戏绝不是讲故事！”“好游戏应富有沉浸感！”“好游戏反应现实！”“游戏的本质是规则！”“游戏是作者的表达！”“作者是死的，游戏是活的！”

无论谁想说服你游戏只是一种形式，你都要保持怀疑态度。没有人可以断言文学仅仅是单一的印刷媒体史，或者情节结构的进化史。文学究竟为何物，这要取决于你为何学习或创造文学。但要是说它们中的某一者是唯一正确的文学创造或理解方式，那就真是贬低了文学作品的价值。

在游戏领域，这种简约的表述通常被过度矫正成一种先入为主的问题。在本世纪初，行业中有一种反对过于叙事化的过场动画和谜题式的冒险游戏的观点，许多设计师也发出了类似于“玩家的自我表达才是关键，设计师应该在游戏中隐身”的观点。现在，随着小规模体验式游戏的崛起，我们不时听到相反的过度论调：“创造者的表达才是一切——优秀游戏应向玩家表达作者的心声！”

当然，这两种想法都有可取之处，这要取决于你想创造哪种游戏，以及创造游戏的方式。由于一种表达形式在文化范围内总能找到立足之处，所以游戏设计师通常会觉得自己有责任大胆发声，支持一些定义了所有游戏类型的主张。我喜欢不同观点的交锋，以及富有建设性的争论。但我认为对设计原教旨主义的合理质疑有助于设计师更好地运用更多理念——即使这些理念互有冲突，这样他们才能解决设计问题，并更好地理解何为游戏，以及游戏运行方式。所以不要做设计原教旨主义者：要包容冲突。游戏并非一件事物，而是多种事物。

教学大纲

在此我想分享自己教学过程中的一个真正的教学大纲，即《Game Design 1》，这是纽约大学游戏中心所有游戏设计MFA学生第一学期必修的硕士课程。该大纲与本科课程的大纲《Introduction to Game Design》极为相似。我发现以一种严格的方式来看待游戏设计对本科和硕士生来说都很新鲜，这种课程对这两者都很适用。

如果你是在游戏设计课堂或讲习班授课，你所带的班级可能是一个更大的科系或课程中唯一的游戏班——很少看到有什么课堂仅传授设计知识。我很幸运地在一个整个系都与游戏相关的地方任教，所以参与我的游戏设计课程的学生，通常也还是要来听我上的游戏史、游戏研究、游戏制作的课程。我知道许多游戏课堂和讲习班需要同时处理这些领域的问题，所以相信我，我的大纲应该也会符合你的需求。

这个大纲分为三部分。该课程将游戏视为一种数学和逻辑形式系统，就像成熟的人类系统一样，就像嵌入更大的文化体系的设计文化一样。这是我和Katie Salen在我们的教科书《Rules of Play》中所提出的Rules/Play/Culture方法一样。提供多种理解游戏的方式与我在上文中提到的“多维理解”和“反对原教旨主义”的理念直接相关。

这就是论文的序言。这个论文系列的其余内容将分别解析大纳，进一步探讨特定话题或活动。接下来的博文将以“课程”的形式出现，每一者都将专注于我在课堂上所使用的单项训练或作业。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How I Teach Game Design. (prologue)

by Eric Zimmerman

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.

The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

How I Teach Game Design.

Prologue: The Practice of Game Design

an introduction, first principles, a rant against design fundamentalism, and a syllabus

Bona fides

Why should you read some blog post about how someone teaches? I started out wanting to write a series of essays in order to share my teaching techniques – syllabi and readings, concepts and methods, exercises and assignments. However, early on in the process I realized that I was not just writing about how to teach game design. These short pieces are really about how to learn game design.

So don’t let the name fool you. These little essays I call How I Teach Game Design are not just for teachers. They are for working game designers, design students, game players, critics and researchers – anyone who wants to better understand the process of game design. And furthermore, you certainly don’t have to be in a classroom to make use of them: nothing is stopping you from applying these concepts to your current project or trying out some of the exercises with your friends or office-mates.

I am a game designer who also teaches game design. I have been working in the game industry for 20 years, and have been teaching for nearly that long, beginning in 1995 when Frank Lantz and I began team-teaching at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. Since then, I’ve taught courses and workshops at dozens of universities, conferences, and organizations, from MIT to USC, from Helsinki to Beijing. All this time, I’ve been making games as my full-time job – digital games and paper games, on my own, with Gamelab (the NYC-based studio I co-founded with Peter Lee and ran for nine years), and with many amazing collaborators.

Now I find myself back at NYU, as a full-time Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center. When I started teaching two decades ago, game design was a strange and exotic subject for an academic class. To say that you were taking a class on game design sounded like a joke – like you were taking a class on how to eat junk food.

Today it’s hard to find a university, art school, or technical college without game-related classes or degree programs of one kind or another. Even grade schools often use games in classes or host afterschool programs around game creation. A different take are the Quest to Learn public schools in New York City and Chicago (created by the Institute of Play, a non-profit I co-founded), that integrate games and play as a model for learning across the entire curriculum. For better or worse, games have penetrated education in many ways and at many levels.

But more important than schools and universities, all of us involved in games – designers, writers, players – can always train harder and become better. Game design is not about making games – about shipping finished products. It is more like a martial art or learning a musical instrument: a practice where we learn over time by taking on challenging problems. That’s what I believe. And that’s how I teach game design.

First principles

In weeks to come, I will detail specific exercises and methods I use to teach. But in this opening “prologue” post, I wanted to establish some groundwork first. Over the years, I have evolved an approach to teaching game design that has a number of key concepts at its core. Obviously, there isn’t a single right way to teach anything – it’s perfectly reasonable that an excellent game design course might be based on very different assumptions. But I list some of my own first principles below.

Learning by making. My game design classes are not lecture classes. They are hands-on workshop-style classes, in which the main activity consists of making games. Occasionally I may introduce some ideas with an informal lecture or discussion, but the primary thing that people do is to actually design games.

A game is a game is a game. In my game design classes, students generally do not make videogames. They create card games, board games, physical games, social games, and other kinds of non-digital games. We do discuss all kinds of games, on and off the computer. But by avoiding computer game creation, we can design more games in a short period of time, focusing on the fundamentals of game design, rather than getting caught up in technical and production issues.

The craft of game design. For me game design is a discipline, like architecture, graphic design, or other design fields. This doesn’t mean there is just one correct approach – there are thousands of valid approaches to architecture! – but it does mean that I engage my field with the focus of a disciplinary craft. In game design, we can learn and practice techniques, methods, and concepts with a high degree of rigor.

Multiple frames of understanding. Games are not one thing – they are many things. Games are not interactive stories; they are not formal systems of rules; they are not the personal expression of the designer – they are all of these things simultaneously and many more. A challenge for game designers is to appreciate that games are math, psychology, culture, aesthetics, narrative, politics, and any number of other things – all at the same time. Every frame we might put around games is useful at some moment in the design process. Designers need to learn when a particular frame of understanding can help them solve a problem and when it can be a problem.

Truth is utility. As a design field, game design is not science. The goal of game design is not to uncover the truths of nature. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t have important definitions, concepts and ideas – and I do introduce many concepts in my classes. However, the “truth” of a concept in game design is its utility – its value in solving a problem. Some concepts are more useful for some designers than others, or for solving problems in certain kinds of games more than others. As Marvin Minsky has put it, a concept is “a thing to think with.” The measure of whether a game design concept is “true” for you is whether or not it helps you solve a problem.

Theory is clean; practice is messy. When we learn an idea in game design, it’s like learning a proper wrestling stance: 60% of your weight on the front foot, the back foot at a 45% angle to your opponent, etc. That kind of exact technique is fine for training, but in the heat of a real match – when you are wrestling with a game design problem – we almost never make use of concepts in a clean and orthodox way. The goal of game design is not to apply theory perfectly – it is to create successful games – however it is that you decide to define success. We should never get hung up in the “correct” application of theory – truth is utility, after all.

Learn to think like a designer. For me, the single most important outcome of a game design class is the ability to “think like a designer.” I use this phrase to encapsulate a number of different skills. These include the ability to think systemically, to give and receive thoughtful criticism, to create games through an iterative process, and to collaborate well with others.

This is only a partial list of ideas that structure my approach to learning game design. In blog posts to come, I will elaborate on some of these concepts, and will add others as well.

Sidebar: Against fundamentalism

Let me highlight for a moment one idea that informs several of the “first principles” I listed above. I am very much against what I call design fundamentalism. This is the notion that there is a single, valid approach to creating or understanding games. Design fundamentalism comes in many forms: “Games are about storytelling!” “Games are NOT about storytelling!” “Good games are immersive!” “Good games mirror reality!” “Games are essentially rules!” “Games are about the author’s expression!” “The author is dead!”

Anytime someone tries to convince you that games are just one thing, be skeptical. No one would say that literature consists solely of the history of the printing press, or the politics of gender representation, or the evolution of plot structures. Depending on why you are studying or creating literature, one or more of these approaches might be useful to you. But to say that one of them is THE single, valid approach to literature cheapens the enterprise of literature as a whole.

In games, these kinds of reductive statements usually come about as overcorrections to a perceived problem. In the early 2000s, there was a reaction against heavily authored cut-scenes and puzzle-like adventure game structures in videogames, and many designers made statements like “Player expression is everything – in a good game, the designer should be invisible!” Today, with the rise of smaller-scale experimental games, we sometimes hear the opposite overcorrection: “Creator expression is everything – a good game exposes players to a new kind of authorial voice!”

Of course both of these approaches can be valid, depending on the kind of game you want to make and the way you want to make it. As an expressive form still finding its identity in culture at large, game designers often feel obligated to stake out terrain with bold statements that radically define all of games. I love contestation of ideas, and productive argument and debate. But I think a healthy skepticism about design fundamentalism would help designers make use of more ideas – even blending contradictory ideas together – as they solve design problems and try to better understand what games are and how they function. Don’t be a design fundamentalist: embrace contradiction. Games are not one thing – they are many things.

A syllabus

To finish this first blog post about teaching game design, I wanted to share an actual syllabus from my teaching. (Click here to view or download the PDF.) The syllabus is for Game Design 1, a masters-level class that all of the Game Design MFA students at the NYU Game Center take their very first semester. The syllabus is also nearly identical to Introduction to Game Design, the undergraduate version of the class. I find that thinking about game design in a rigorous way is new to everyone, whether they are graduate or undergraduate, and the course works well for both.

If you are teaching a game design class or workshop, you may be teaching the only game class in a larger department or program – in which case it is hard to have a class so focused on just design. I have the incredibly luxury of teaching within an entire department dedicated to games. So the NYU Game Center students that take my Game Design 1 class are also taking at the same time classes on the history of games (Games 101), on the scholarship of games (Game Studies 1), and on the production of digital games (Game Studio 1). I know that many game classes and workshops need to address all of these areas and more at the same time – believe me, I’ve been there! So please don’t feel bad about slicing and dicing my syllabus as meets your needs.

The syllabus is structured in three units. The course explores games as formal systems of math and logic, as experienced human systems, and as designed culture embedded within larger cultural contexts. This is the same Rules / Play / Culture approach that Katie Salen and I use in our textbook Rules of Play, a structure which came out of the classes at I taught with Frank Lantz at NYU in the 1990s. This idea of providing a variety of schemas for understanding games is linked directly to the notions of “Multiple Frames of Understanding” and “Against Fundamentalism” that I wrote about above.

And that’s the end of the prologue. The rest of the this essay series will unravel the syllabus, taking a closer look at a particular topic or activity. Future posts will take the form of “lessons” and each will focus on a single assignment or exercise that I use in my classes. （source：gamasutra）