A Game Design Div III by Luke Townsend
Hampshire College, 2020
Seek the Horizon
Advanced Learning Activities
CS-327: Interdisciplinary Game Studios
This class did not pertain or contribute much to my Div III, yet I still believe it was an extremely valuable experience for myself. The goal of the course was to create a digital game, made by students from scratch, and publish it on the App Store and Google Play Store. This class required collaboration, teamwork, self-sufficiency, and leadership. My role in the course was the production manager for the game design team. Throughout my life and education, I've had numerous amounts of leadership roles and thought my experience would benefit the team and the final product. Even with my experience, I still found this course challenging, as I had little digital game design experience, and knew I would have to adapt quickly to be successful. Luckily for me, our programming manager, lead, and team, was very easy to work with, and helped me learn the ropes. As for my team, I often served as a person they could draw on for experience. When I tasked them with completing a goal, I never told them how to do it, wanting them to figure it out for themselves. Only when I was called upon for felt that my experience was needed did I step in. I wanted the team to learn how to complete tasks on their own rather than being told to follow orders. I used this course as a learning experience for myself and others, and found it wonderful to participate in. While this course did not directly impact my Div, I still feel it was worth the time and effort based off of what I earned from it.
CS-297: Analog Game Design
Once again, this course did not directly impact my Div III, rather it was something I've been thinking about and wanting to do for a few semesters now. This course was quite different than other courses offered by the college, as it was co-taught by game design students with the help of Ira Fay. I initially pitched the idea that a couple of students would design and teach the content in the course to gain experience in teaching to convey the knowledge we've gained throughout our college history. I felt I was the "primary" TA during the semester by creating the initial schedule, leading and presenting many discussion topics, creating most of the presentations, and leading many of the lab hours that were held. Additionally, I took on 4 students to mentor them individually and help them maintain the course requirement to help them succeed in the class. This course was a longtime goal of mine, as it's quite possible I want become a teacher of game design once I get even more experience. While the course was cut short due to unforeseen events and moved to online learning, I still feel the time we had on campus was beneficial not only to myself and the other TAs, but also to the students taking the course. This class verified that I could succeed as an educator if I feel that's where my path lies, and quelled any fears I had that I couldn't live up to my idols that I've watched for years an learned from. My only regret was not being able to finish what I started the way I had started it.