Pretty poor course. The lectures are incomplete. Most of the learning process is left for the assignments. Finally, the scoring system for the assignments is very subjective leading to unfair evaluation. Please revise this course because it is a pity so low quality while first course is so good.

Excellent course, it was sure difficult at the beginning but be patient, at the end you will be amazed of the amount of game design skills you've learned! Thanks a lot professor O'Donnell!

I probably have to rate this course 5 stars just for the supplementary reading materials provided. There's a lot of great information provided here. This course helps formalize a process that highly talented people just do intuitively. With the information within, you're able to better understand different aspects of your creative process. At times, the professor's delivery can be a little distracting (he has quite a few awkward pauses in the middle of thoughts, and uses the phrase, "right?" a little too unconsciously). I also found some of the lecture material difficult to connect in a practical sense. Some aspects of the design, play, experience model could use better examples in lecture to make the points more concrete. It is a deep model, and they do in fact point you to a whitepaper published on it so there is that, but just for the sake of the lessons; the examples need better explanation. The quizzes were easy, but challenging in the wrong way. Often, questions are posed that weren't ever directly answered in lecture or the materials, and sometimes they are worded in ways that make it difficult to pinpoint what they are looking for. It would be nice to see student responses to the free-response questions make a comeback in future lessons or at least know that they could possibly carry into the material used to teach the next incoming class. The assignments follow a logical progression, and again are supplemented with great materials. The review system is a little wonky. I've posted in the boards about this. They need to make the criteria more clear. The community activity is pretty low. I'm not sure how this can be addressed, but overall this is a great course and perfect second stop on the journey towards the Game Design and Development specialization.

This course while provides good theoretical and supplementary information and theoretical knowledge on how to include mechanics and design a game using design documents and prototypes, I personally feel that some of the technical skill gaps should be accounted for via taking another course - Game Development for Modern Systems - first before taking the Game Design course. There's an assignment that required to produce a prototype, and the Introduction to Game Development course covers very specific recipes using the Unity 3D game engine. This knowledge and skill information are not sufficient to help the developer-in-training to self-develop, translating the specific mechanics the person has in-mind into a self-sufficient developed prototype. It would be great if a separate course or project module were to provide sufficient sandbox-ing and experimental ground to be flex their creativity onto their programming skills, and use that as a springboard onto the prototype game submission. Overall, this course does cover sufficient ground for students to be curious enough to explore different game genres and learn the creative process behind such developments.

An exceptionally informative course that covers the more intricate principles behind the actual design of a game (not to be confused with the more technical aspects of development). From brainstorming ideas to developing a concept to actually testing your game before release, this touches on the more difficult thought processes that one may not learn by simply picking up a game engine and learning how to build a game from the ground up. Couple the concepts learned here with the technical skills from the game development courses (or your own technical experience and knowledge), and you'll be much better equipped to make a solid, marketable product.

This course is amazing, it confronts you with questions regarding game design and forces you to find creative answers, all of this while getting your hands dirty! You'll think of the game as a pitch, then its story, then the whole thing as precisely and accurately as possible and, finally, you'll be tasked to prototype a part of it! It's an invaluable experience, and Casey O'Donnell does a really good job with the videos. There's only one question left: why aren't you taking this course yet???

The concepts are good and important, writing the assignments was not so easy :)

It feels like there is a missing link between the concepts & the writing the documents.

For example -the last exercise (prototype) was not good at all for most people I checked (including myself?).

On a secondary importance level: some of the questions/answers are hard to understand or related to extras (movies, for example) I did not I need to see, so it was a bit frustrating.

This course was a little stressful, but it seriously pays off. The instructor was excellent, he explains everything clearly and gave us quizzes and projects not only to do, but to really learn from. He discusses subjects that really are worth thinking about, if you are considering becoming a Game Designer. I highly recommend this course for avid learners and those that would love to work hands-on on projects that concern Game Design.

Pros: Good lectures. The professor (Casey) provided a lot of interesting readings to supplement the discussions. Some of them were a bit on the scholarly side, but overall surprisingly interesting and informative. I also watched the documentary about indie game designers (Indie Game: The Movie) during this course and found it very helpful. Cons: I wish the quiz questions had explanations of why something was right or wrong.

Teaching style a little loose for me, but man did he make me work on my assignments. The information is valuable and the references are beneficial. My take-away from attending this course gives a good base on how to think about a game and set things up properly from the start. No quick short cuts here. Just good old fashion hard work and how to approach things logically to get things done constructively and productively.

I wanted to take these courses to supplement my own university's Game Focus in Computer Science curriculum, and I got even more than I'd hoped for. This course is the perfect introduction to key game design concepts that most universities don't teach (as opposed to pure programming), and I'm certain that my ventures into game development as a career will be much smoother thanks to this course.

I think the course is well-structured, and it contains a lot of useful materials, I really liked it.

At the same time, I think, while it's easy to go through the course quickly and answer the questions, if the one is really interested in the topic, they need much more time than the description mentioned to read all the articles, to learn from them by applying them at work/in practice.

This course covers everything you need to know about planning and designing your game. Don't be afraid to think big and even if your aren't sure about a game idea you have write it down and keep coming back to it. My capstone project was based on my design from this part of the course after many iterations of the idea and my game came out great.

This course is very thorough, explaining game design principles (NB: not just the barest basics!) in-depth, yet it is not 'rocket science' in terms of difficulty - the material is conveyed in a friendly and comprehensible manner. If you're seriously passionate about game design, not just idly curious, this is definitely the course for you!

Very comprehensive and thorough introduction to game design. I gained lots of insight into what it really takes to be a developer, and the steps involved. This course really helped to explain the process of getting a game idea off the ground, fleshing out details, and making it presentable to a team or prospective producer. Thanks!

Great framework for game design. Got me focusing on a lot of things that I hadn't considered previously. I originally felt it started kind of slow, but that is how any idea starts. It needs to go through all of the steps necessary to make it a reality and Casey O'Donnell is great at teaching the process. Recommended

I really enjoyed this course, I learned a lot of thing that will help me to build better games and today I have a clear idea of the whole process of creating games. So I think that everybody that would like to build games, should do this course. Thanks to Coursera and Casey O'Donnell for providing this course.

This is a fantastic course! It game me so much insight as to what goes on behind the scenes of the wonderful stories and adventures we see in many of today's video games. Probably my favorite course of the specialization. It made me feel creative, and helped me to bring more to my simple ideas for a game.

It would a 4.5 star actually. The thing is the course thought me more in just a few hours than a 4 month physical course in Game Design. That it super awesome.

There a few things here and there that i wish were more elaborated upon, but then again i only audited the course not participated in it actively.

This course taught me to think about and approach games in a different way. I'm now more observant about the world around me and how a "silly" or "normal" activity can become an interesting element for gameplay. Highly recommended for anyone who is willing to take games and game making seriously.

A pretty nifty course for game design. I loved getting to work on the documentation planning for the game I was creating. Simple and easy to follow. Some of the quiz questions were a bit tricky as I had spent more time than I though I would, going back to the lectures to review the questions.

I love the instructor's style of teaching. He appears to be more of a friendly mentor, who himselves believes in what he teaches, and also has fun building games.

The course is also well structured, and covers a lot of concepts and facts without making it feel burdensome. Well done sire!

I did watched all course. It was really interesting and useful course.

I already participated before in gamedev semi successful, few years project was fine, but latter was closed.

That course helps me to found right question, what I must ask my self when create and design game.

Thanks

This course gives great insight to the importance of planning out the various structures of a game before building it. The valuable resources such as the readings were also very much helpful. The instructor has a calm spirit and his lectures are interesting and easy to understand.

When I'd started the course, I did't like the course, because of the course is mainly theoretical! But soon I got to learn that Game Designer is the foundation and creator of games! And, I love the way our tutor taught the lecture. This is the best course for any game designer!