I wanted to start this on a new thread since the original had become so long.

I plan to have the first unit work like this:

Game Design

Introduce the unit with a fun game students play that doesn't require much in the way of materials

Reflect on what occurred and use this as a springboard to lecture on Game Design concepts

Students play table top games and analyze them

Students recreate a game and change it's components, producing (like an artwork) a board and pieces or a set of cards

Character Design

Learning some basic figure drawing and going on to create a model sheet for a character of their own

Learning Blender and recreating their character in 3d

Question: How best to connect the first and second unit? What concepts might be carried over?

Video Game aesthetics

Learning forms of representation (connects to character design) and something about genre or types of games and their formulas, narrative and conceptual. Also the history of video games and how science and art mix so that forms of representation change over time.

Question: Where do I bring this in? Does this become a discreet unit or do I pull it through the whole course as an underlying study?

Making video games

Following tutorials in Unity to get the 3d experience, maybe making landscapes/environments (I can bring art history in here as a reference point).

Learning Game Maker and incorporating the character they designed into a simple game

Question: How long will that take?

Culminating project will be redesigning an existing game (or game type) to incorporate a social justice approach. I don't care for video games in general but I think it would be good to teach how to use them constructively, as opposed to simply as entertainment. So rather than silly things or violent games, they can make games that have personal relevance to events in their lives.

Question: Would they have the skills?

Please stop posting education topics in the Game Design forum. The game design forum is only for discussing questions about game design.

Where should I post this?

Individually these units could be pretty solid, but together I think they may be a little much for a one-year course.

I'm a little unclear about the relationship between 2d and 3d through the course. But nonetheless, my own advice is to stick to 2d throughout. If you're worried they'll think that's uncool, consider framing the course around mobile game development instead; I think it'll keep expectations more realistic. They'll be used to 2d mobile games with achievable pixel or vector art, and with a relatively simple core interaction loop. (NB: I think GameMaker requires an extra license fee if you want to actually compile to a mobile platform. But saying "We're doing simple mobile-style games" will at least give them an idea of the scope of possible projects. When I made my first game at university, the prof said "We're doing 1980s-style arcade games"; we didn't actually target an actual vintage computer, but it kept our expectations realistic.)

Unit 1: I'm all for teaching game design by getting out the pens & scissors. Just a note that implementing *novel* game designs as software does require somebody to do the programming at some point. You can't really make novel game designs (in the technical sense of design) by checking boxes and copy/pasting code from tutorials; you can only do minor variations of standard designs. Just something to keep in mind for point 4. If someone creates something amazing in Unit 1 and wants to bring that forward into Unit 4, what means do you have to support them?

Unit 2: Creating a 3d model is fun and perhaps doable, but it's a big leap from making a model to using it in a game in Unit 4, unless you want it to bounce around rigidly like a scarecrow. I'd suggest instead creating a 2d character and teaching them some of the timeless basics of traditional animation (like the 12 Principles of Animation from Thomas and Johnston).

Unit 3: I think a good way to draw in art history is to point out the parallels between the modernist period and today's videogame landscape. Videogame art is in some ways in every period at once, but I'd say we're more in our modernist period than anything else. The state-of-the-art has gone so far towards photorealism that a lot of devs are stepping back from that arms race and asking "Ok, what *else* can we do? What are the limits of this medium in other directions?" This is partly practical, but it's also an exciting time of artistic exploration, and debate, and feuds, and manifestos. What luck, that your students are around to see, and participate in, a modernist period! If they realize that, they may appreciate the original modernist period more ;D

So give them a balanced diet of art games, especially to get their mind out of the place where "photorealism" is their default artistic choice.

This might be something to draw through the whole course, and then have the third unit be more about environmental, level, and narrative design.

Unit 4... It depends in part on what you mean by "silly" and what you mean by "violent". Much of what an inexperienced non-programmer can make in a person-month is silly. And your interpretation of "nonviolence" could mean either "no machine-gunning people with blood flying everywhere" (a reasonable request for a school project!) or "compatible with ahims?" (which is a lot to ask of someone designing a game by putting together code fragments from tutorials).

And I should note that I only design nonviolent games, so I'm more likely than most to be sympathetic to that final project. Retrofitting existing game designs to be nonviolent is my idea of great fun. But I don't think it's a good fit for the students' likely skill-set, and unless you're already a game designer and programmer you won't be in a good position to help them.

In all, you might want to consider something that's not so much a game design course -- any true design they might do requires some programming to implement-- and instead concentrate on the game development part (character, animation, and environmental design). Maybe if you already had a game design and implementation that fit your existing creative demands, and had each student or team design a character and level.

For example, say the theme of the game is "A teenager overcoming a real-life obstacle that manifests as a videogame challenge", and you have a run & jump & avoid obstacles game already implemented (a completely standard set of mechanics that you could piece together from tutorials). The student designs an animated avatar and a level that, through its environmental and narrative design, serves as a metaphor for the real-life obstacle, and MAYBE designs a novel mechanic if they can program or are willing to learn. That gets them concentrating on design in the artistic sense ("How do I best represent my theme in the chosen medium?"), which is probably more your forte, and it's not "silly" "violent" stuff, and it also doesn't so much run into the problem of students designing games more ambitious than they can actually pull off.

I get what you mean about the mobile app thing for 2d. It's not that I actually have to do 3d, but it just seems so much of what video games are now, and again many teachers seem to be doing it without any problem. The Ploor intro book goes over it in Blender. I will try it myself to see how difficult it is. You may be thinking I want to do complex things with 3d. As far as character design I just want to have students create their drawn characters in 3d. Is that too much?

For Unit 1 I'm not saying I will expect them to bring the same concepts into their video games. Unit 1 will be a self-contained unit. I do wonder, however, how I will have them apply what they have learned in unit 1 to the other units. Ideas?

Will they be able to easily put a scanned drawing into Game Maker?

Would it be difficult to change an existing game into one with a student-centered theme? Would it require coding?

I like your idea of teams designing levels. How would that all be put together technically?

What do you mean don't make the course about game design? It would include game design, character design, aesthetics/visual culture and game development.

I'm also wondering what concepts would be important to teach (thus how long I should spend) on table top games. Considering that the finished video games towards the end of the school year might not be too sophisticated, what would be the minimum in concepts the students would have to learn at the table top stage?

I don't want to go too in-depth with that if they will not be using a lot of it at the game development stage.

Can someone please help?

Actually this question is different. I'm looking for how concepts might connect across the different aspects of a game design course (sequencing, connecting and relating).