I teach game design and I was wondering if anyone could help with this. I am planning to do weekly warmups along the lines of what I do with my art classes. I want to show a walkthrough of a big game each week (as opposed to an artwork) and have students write brief responses each day. Warmups shouldn't take more than 5-7 minutes. Any suggestions for questions I can use? The objective is to get them to develop their critique skills in analyzing games for their form, structure and content. The way the art analysis goes is: describe/analyze/interpret/evaluate. 

You can examine the things you see in the video like the general mechanics, genre, styles, and popular trends and influences that the game is following. Look at things that would generally categorize the game.

Without playing, it'd be tough to examine what in particular actually makes the game you're examining entertaining but you could ask, "What about this video makes you want to or not want to play this game?" or maybe, "What audiences would this game likely appeal to?" They're really more marketing questions but very valid when you want to sell your game.

Thanks for your response- sort of in line with what I was thinking. I want to be sure the questions would get them thinking critically about representation in games.

32 minutes ago, gameteacher said:

Thanks for your response- sort of in line with what I was thinking. I want to be sure the questions would get them thinking critically about representation in games. 

Representation of genders? ...ethnicities?

What does that have to do with game design?

52 minutes ago, Guy Fleegman said:

Representation of genders? ...ethnicities?

What does that have to do with game design?

How games communicate values in the way they represent subjects, genres, and sure; things like gender and ethnicity.

36 minutes ago, gameteacher said:

How games communicate values in the way they represent subjects, genres, and sure; things like gender and ethnicity.

I would not play a game that communicated values. As sexist and racist as Postal 2 was, it never communicated values. A game that did would probably come off as preachy and not be well received except by a few that wanted to promote some agenda.

1 hour ago, gameteacher said:

How games communicate values in the way they represent subjects, genres, and sure; things like gender and ethnicity.

Game design here is quite literally "what do you put in your game such that it achieves its goal?". Since by far the most common goal is to waste time in a fun way, that becomes "what do you put in your game such that it is fun to play?".

Meta-considerations aren't that important, their relevance is perhaps more attached to the kind of audience you want to attract?

58 minutes ago, fleabay said:

I would not play a game that communicated values. As sexist and racist as Postal 2 was, it never communicated values. A game that did would probably come off as preachy and not be well received except by a few that wanted to promote some agenda.

All games communicate values.

1 minute ago, gameteacher said:

All games communicate values.

My advice is not to confuse pushing agendas (good or bad) as being a core part of a game design curriculum.

If you wanted to teach a course covering how games affect people's values, you'd be going into psychological aspects of emotional manipulation, creating empathy (and hatred) within the player, skewing the representations of less desirable (and more desirable) moral conclusions and so on... all to achieve a goal of instilling a new personal belief (or confirming an existing one) in the player. That does not sound like game design to me, which is why I questioned you on it.

If you created a board game design course, would you be talking about representation?

46 minutes ago, gameteacher said:

All games communicate values.

OK, I'll bite. What values do Pac-Man and Minecraft communicate? And do those values make them substantially different than most other games?