About this Course
Video games are among the most important entertainment aspects of our generation exceeding movies, books, and television from a revenue and cultural significance standpoint. This course aims to provide an academic and theoretical basis to allow the participant to understand video games, their history, how they’re designed, why are they fun, the game development industry and how to get a job in that industry.
What You Will Learn
- Video Games history
- Video games genres
- Game design and the role of the game designers
- Game mechanics
- Level design
- Prototyping
- Narrative design
- Playtesting
- Balancing
- Games industry-main concepts
- Structure of a development team
- Documentation
- How to get a job or get started in the industry
Institution
Edraak
Edraak, is a massive open online course (MOOC) platform, that is an initiative of the Queen Rania Foundation (QRF). QRF is determined to ensure that the Arab world is at the forefront of educational innovation. As such, QRF has capitalized on regional Arab talent to leverage technology developed by the Harvard-MIT consortium, edX, to create the first non-profit Arabic MOOC platform. The new MOOC platform will present the Arab world with unique and vital opportunities that can be part of a necessary revolution in education and learning.
First, the platform will broadcast the best Arab professors to the region, offering original Arabic courses – developed by QRF – to further enrich Arab education. Through its partnership with edX, the platform will also give Arab learners access in Arabic to courses taught and developed at top tier institutions like HarvardX, MITX, and UC BerkelyX. All courses are delivered at no cost to the learner.
Second, QRF envisions the use of the platform to showcase Arab role models by broadcasting short online courses by practitioners and professionals from a variety of fields spanning the arts and sciences.
Finally, QRF believes that the platform will enable the Arab world to take advantage of the international interest in regional affairs to tell its own story to the world. Arab university professors and regional experts can use the platform to give courses in English about the region and its history. This will serve to inform a global audience that is interested in the region’s development.
Instructors
Fawzi Musmar
Fawzi is a Creative Director, Game Designer, Leader, author, public speaker and retired e-sports player that has been in the gaming industry for over 16 years in a career that spanned the Middle East, New Zealand, Japan and Europe working for companies such as DICE (EA), King (Activision Blizzard), Gameloft and Atlus Ltd to name a few. As a Game Designer / Director he has worked on over 20 titles that have been enjoyed by millions of players worldwide most notably games in the Candy Crush Franchise, Persona Franchise and many more. As an author, he wrote the first-ever textbook about game design in Arabic: Al-Khallab on the art of game design. He’s a columnist at Pocket Gamer Arabia, and blogs frequently about game design and the business of making games.
