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Learner Reviews & Feedback for World Design for Video Games by California Institute of the Arts

4.5
stars
785 ratings

About the Course

Start creating your world. A game world is not just a backdrop for your game—be it minimal or detailed, contained or part of a much bigger universe, it provides the context for your player. Ultimately, a game world should feel alive and wholly unique to any player who will experience it. In this course, we will explore game worlds in existing games and study the art and influences that inform their themes and styles. We will also investigate key components of environment and level design as well as strategies designers use to define gameplay or advance it. We’ll also look at navigation and the elements that make your world as real (or unreal) as you want it to be. A weekly challenge will prompt you to explore styles and inspirations for possible game worlds, and you’ll learn effective ways to communicate your ideas from concepts to presentation-worthy proofs of concept....

Top reviews

SA

Sep 20, 2019

i really loved this course. it inspired me to be more innovative and think out of the box. it changed my mindset a lot. so thanks to my instructor and my peers. your words meant a lot to me.

JK

Sep 10, 2020

This is a fantastic course to run your imagination to it's top! You can built your own game world and show it to other students. The learning curve is definitely improving with this course!

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176 - 195 of 195 Reviews for World Design for Video Games

By Nuno F A C

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Jun 24, 2018

Substitles are bad, it's hard to understand most of the times what is being said. Also, the narration could be better

By Andrey K

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Dec 21, 2015

I wish the course would give me more structured information and examples of applications.

By Alvaro M

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May 23, 2016

The assignments and theory are interesting enough to get you started on world design.

By Jaime R

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Dec 22, 2015

Useful but as with the first course of the specialization very light on content

By Aditya z

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Jun 30, 2019

getting a review in the peer grade assignment is so time cosuming

By Rafael R S R

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May 11, 2020

The assignments are good, but the videos don't teach much.

By Daniel H G

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Feb 6, 2016

it's okay,

By Gerardo D

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Sep 5, 2020

I will have to be honest here, I only finished this course because it was needed to complete the specialization. Compared to the other courses in this specialization this one was extremely lacking. The lessons felt improvised and the assignments unfulfilling. In each lesson the teacher seemed like he was going to give the definition of a concept and then he goes on to give questions that you should ask yourself when defining something or just game examples in games of a concept you haven't learned. This makes note taking difficult and leaves you trying to figure out the concept for yourself without knowing if what you infer is correct. The assignments felt like something you can do in 30 minutes and still pass because the example given and the requirements don't match. I graded assignments where you can clearly see the student had no idea what to turn in. In the other courses you felt progression in each weeks assignment. In this course you can pretty much do the assignments with what you learned in the previous two courses. You can tell he knows a lot on the topic but this course should be redone more thoughtfully. I began to investigate more about World Design outside because I felt I learned very little from here.

By Mohsen A

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Jul 6, 2023

Not a very good course, unfortunately. Much weaker curriculum than the other courses and the instructor seems not very confident. The course is full of Questions from his side instead of guiding us toward better designs which get frustrating sometimes. The assignments are also not very good teaching. Honestly, I just wanted to get over this one so I get to the next one as I enjoyed Fran Kraus and Hamind Derakhshani's courses before.

By sean o

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Jul 21, 2017

I found the videos hard to follow and the homework was not very clear or particularly engaging. I think the other courses had a much better framework to understand the topic. I still don't know what are the key elements of a game world or how to judge if one world is good or bad or why it is good or bad.

By Alexandra

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Dec 15, 2015

I was a little bit dissapointed with this course because, in my opinion, it is not structured well, it is just an amount of questions we need to think about. It has ended but I have the feeling I still have no good idea about what is world design for video games...

By Felegz

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Dec 19, 2015

I did not found this course much useful. I expected more detailed examples of worldbuilding, but talks were quite vague and unspecific. "Sit think about this, go learn about that".

By Joshua B

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Jun 26, 2017

This course didn't interest me very much. I now know about maps of world design, one more facet to video game development.

By レヷブレート サ

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May 15, 2016

articulation needs to be improved, talked too fast, content doesn't give much

By wiglaff

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Aug 9, 2023

Lack of usefull information

we ran through all the topics very superficially

By mayank s

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Feb 16, 2016

The course is very abstract.

By Pawel S

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Dec 15, 2015

few specifics and examples

By Breanne C

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Sep 7, 2018

This instructor is incredibly difficult to listen to, his cadence and non-neutral accent make it a conscious effort to focus on what he's saying rather than how he says it. If you're uncomfortable in front of a camera, that's fine, just team up with someone who can present your material on your behalf; this is why we can collaborate with others to whom our strengths compliment one another. I highly advise that Théo take a second pass at the video content with a colleague who is comfortable in front of a camera and has a neutral speaking voice, as I'm finding that I am absorbing little to no content (which is rather counterproductive) unless I pause the video and simply read the transcript.

By Yelyzaveta P

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Nov 1, 2022

The peer feedback is a nonsense. Guillermo Daniel Schwartzmann Guiulfo gave me low marks and all his feedback is just "gg". Coursera should pay attention to the peer-graded assignments system. My submission is good and now I have 4.5/6 for the assignment just because of this person. Why my final score is affected by the review of someone who doesn't care at all about assignments and the course ? And the course itself is really basic, most of videos are 1-2 min lections. So what should we learn here? Don't waste your time taking this course.

By Federico

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Jul 24, 2021

Finished week 3 and I can say that just few of the videos and info are helpful. Play some videogames and skip this course.