Areas

International Game Developers Association

• Game Criticism
  • Game Studies/Ludology
  • Experience-centered criticism
  • Customer-oriented criticism
  • Genre Analysis
  • Auteur Studies

• Game History
• Game theory, criticism of mainstream/commercial and experimental media
• Game Research and Media Effects

• Players and Effects
  • Gaming Demographics
  • The cultures of Gaming

• Experience of Play
  • Historical aspects of the experience of play
  • Social aspects of play
  • Emotional aspects of play
  • Cognitive aspects of play
  • psychological aspects of play
  • Human Computer Interaction

• Conceptual Game Design
  • Play Mechanics
  • Boardgame and Roleplaying design
  • Experimental game design
  • Generating new ideas for development and evaluation of games
  • Game Theory
  • Abstract design elements
  • Psychological design considerations
  • Interface design

• Practical Game Design
  • Spatial design
  • Task design
  • Design integration
  • Control schemes
  • Educating the Player
  • Game Tuning
  • Play testing and Player Analysis
  • Design implications of platform choice

• Game Programming
  • Newtonian physics
  • Computational mechanics
  • Linear algebra
  • Differential equations
  • Style and Design
  • Information design
  • Prototyping
  • Testing
  • Programming teams: structure and working relationship
  • Design/technology synthesis
  • System architecture for real time game environments and simulations
  • Data-driven systems
  • Game logic
  • Graphics and Rendering
  • Animation
  • Sound
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Networks
  • Tools for designers and play analysis

• Visual Design
  • Basic visual design
  • Visual design in an interactive context
  • Motion graphics
  • Fundamental principles of architecture
  • Introduction to visual asset generation
  • Architecture
  • Advanced visual asset generation
  • working with 3D hardware
  • Information Visualization

• Audio Design
  • Audio history & theory
  • Audio Design Fundamentals
  • Introduction to Interactive Audio
  • Sound Effects
  • Music
  • 3d Audio

• Interactive Storytelling
  • Story in Non-Interactive Media
  • Approaches to interactive narrative
  • Writing for other media

• Game Production
  • People management and collaborative development
  • Design documentation
  • Scheduling
  • Communication skills
  • Coordinating the efforts of development, quality assurance, sales, marketing, public relations and finance
  • Localization issues, processes and skills
  • Product post-mortems

• Business of Gaming
  • Basics of game industry economics
  • Audience
  • Publisher/Developer Relationships
  • Intellectual property
  • Licenses
  • Patents and the game industry
  • Contracts
  • Content Regulation