This is an archive of a previous Meaningful Play. View current Meaningful Play.
Title | Game-Designing the Game Design Class |
Presenter(s) |
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Time | Thursday, October 20, 4:30p-5:30p |
Location | MSU Union Ballroom |
Format | Keynote |
Description | For more than two decades, Richard Lemarchand worked as a game designer in the console game industry, working for companies like Naughty Dog and Crystal Dynamics on titles as diverse as Gex and Uncharted. In 2012 he made a sudden and quite radical change of career, becoming a full-time professor in the USC Games program at the University of Southern California. Faced with the challenge of revising old classes and creating new ones, Lemarchand turned to what he knew best—game design—not to gamify the curriculum, but to bring principles of human-centered design to his classes, even as he ate up up knowledge and wisdom from the experienced scholars around him. As he enters his fifth year as a professor of game design, Lemarchand is excited to bring his ideas to Meaningful Play: to reflect on playful making, the value of theory and research, the importance of systems thinking and rules-based design in practice, pedagogy and professionalism, and how games academia can help change the unhealthy cultures of "crunch" that permeate so much of the game industry and tech industry. |