I’ve felt kinda crappy the last few months. Really.

Luckily though, I found a solution.

I flew into Mississippi last weekend.  Surgery on Tuesday.  Flew back today (Sunday).

They cut 4 small holes in me.  Dr. Mason, my doctor… he worked me in as his 4th gall bladder removal of the day!

Some people think I’m jumping the gun, but I’m anxious to get back to work tomorrow.  I’m a strange one.

I thought Ike was going to give me more enforced R&R time.  But alas, it petered out when it hit the land.

So I’m back.

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But before I go.  If any of you ever have pains when eating fatty foods, or upper right abdominal pains… have your gall bladders checked.  Nuff said!

Game design is a nebulous job. People have asked me how they can become a game designer. They have some great ideas. Maybe they’ll take some classes.
So I’ve created a syllabus for my upcoming free class called “So You Wanna Be a Game Designer”:

The purpose of this is as follows:

Think of this as night school. Before you spend your hard earned money and time learning C++, Maya, and Java… This course will help you to get the experience of design, without all of the overhead.

I need a good response when people ask me how they can be a game designer. Part of me wants to tell them to take out a huge loan, pack up and go to Full Sail for a couple of years.

It seems like there should be a quicker method for finding out if the discipline is attractive.

If this thing is works it can be a do-it yourselfer, with a final project you can share with your friends.

So I want to create a 2 month crash course to find out if you’ve got the chops. Luckily, I already have a test subject.

So anyways. Here’s my current syllabus for weeks 1 - 3.

1) Design a new “real materials” game. Examples include charades, boccie ball, and tag. The deliverable is a 1 or 2 page document that explains the game’s rules and play structure. If people can read it and easily understand what they need, and how to play the game, then your first homework is a sucess.

2) Focus test your game. Iterate upon your game. Clarify any rules questions that have been found. Game design is very much about iteration and creation. Finally type up the notes you’ve gotten from your focus testers. What worked? What failed?
The first two weeks deal with design in a way that someone with any skill set can attempt. As my friend Justin pointed out to me: “It’s worthless to spend years learning how to program, and then discover you actually don’t like designing games.”

By this point I estimate a good percentage of budding game designers have moved to greener pastures and have dropped out. Actual design and iteration is not as fun for some as they would like to believe. The remaining students are energized by focusing their creative energies.

3) This is tricky.

I feel that a game designer should know something about scripting. This may merit some harsh criticism from some who would say “no designer scripting“. As someone who primarily is payed to script my butt off, I can’t help but to say that, in my experience, it’s a darn fine skill to have as a designer. In “Rusty’s School of Game Design” we’re going to dive in despite all of the controversy and get started on scripting instead of tackling level design or something similar.
There is also a lot of debate here as to the best engine to get our budding designers started.

Neverwinter Nights has a particularly good engine for building missions and dialog. I’m throwing this one out for the simple reason that it’s a bit too focused of an engine for my program.

Flash is a bit sexier for me right now because of the flexibility and sharability of the game. This is still in the running but it gets minus points for the higher pricepoint pushing $700 for CS3 Professional. Also it is restrictive in regard to 3-D graphics.

Game Maker is a gem at $20 and that’s for the professional version. The good news is it has a lot of tutorials, is cheap, and is specifically set up for making games. It even makes .exe’s! The bad news is that its 3D capabilities are limited.

Shoot’em Ups like Team Fortress 2 have good SDKs and tools for creating custom levels. This is appealing, but once again I am determined to focus more on scripting than level design at first, as this course is designed primarily to help people understand whether they they like the day-to-day activities of a designer and I feel that people may enjoy modding and level design more than scripting.
So, the current top-dog for getting everyone’s feet wet in scripting is Yoyo Games’ Game Maker.

I’d like to hear from potential “students” as well as experienced industry people before we nail down week 3 and move on to making weeks 3 - 6.

It’s fun to look back on some of the psychotic quirks of your childhood. Remember True Love Waits?

For those of you who weren’t lucky enough to grow up in the very buckle of the bible belt, you may not remember TWL or the “Silver Ring Thing”. Both of these programs aim to get kids hopped up on Jesus at exciting rock-and-roll events and then convince them to take a virginity pledge.

It’s like signing a contract when you’re high. Teenage hormones beat guilt laden promises to Jesus, however.
Recent studies found that pledgers are more likely to engage in oral and anal intercourse and equally likely to get STDs as non-pledgers. The only effect found is that pledgers did prolong premarital sex for up to a year longer than non-pledgers, but they were more likely to forget to use contraceptives when they did begin having vaginal intercourse.
True Love Waits is just one part of a larger beast known as Abstinence Only Sexual Education.
A program that:

• Has as its exclusive purpose teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity;
• Teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school-age children;
• Teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems;
• Teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of sexual activity;
• Teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects;
• Teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society;
• Teaches young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increase vulnerability to sexual advances, and
• Teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity.

Wikipedia says, “In 2007, a study ordered by Congress found that middle school students who took part in abstinence-only sex education programs were just as likely to have sex in their teenage years as those who did not.”

This program doesn’t actually make kids less likely to abstain from sex, but it does purposefully avoid teaching kids about contraceptives. Anyone else frustrated? Joycelyn Elders is on this video.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for religious pseudo-science being taught instead of cold, hard facts. But shouldn’t it at least get positive results?