This innovative course will bring together theories, guest speakers and case studies from industrial and independent game design for students to gain insights into game design practice as diverse as possible across times, spaces, cultures, media, and technologies.

As a project in this course, students will be tasked with using qualitative (surveys) and quantitative (interviews) methods to research and understand user behaviour, responses, engagement, interest,  preferences and appeal. As part of the project, students will gather data through online and offline research (interview, participant observation, archival research, and survey) about gamers and write a comprehensive report and a game design proposal or report based on the data. Alternatively, students can choose to write about what made a certain game successful (i.e. Grand Auto Theft), coupled with an in-depth research of the fandom and gamers, market, PR, branding, and the relevant sociocultural and sociotechnical process in the global and local contexts.