Day 3 AM Session Plan

Player Types and Difficulty Curve,

Presentation Slides

Session Introduction

TEACHER LED
The first part of the day will be a teacher-led session on player types and difficulty curves.

Game Difficulty
Types of Players
Difficulty Curves and Player Flow


Then, we're going to learn to build levels for two types of 2d games:

Platformers
Dungeon Crawlers

Discussion: Easy and Difficult Games

TEACHER LED

The point of this exercise is to get students thinking about game difficulty. There should be a healthy amount of disagreement over what makes a game difficult, or how difficult a game is. This will prepare them to think about the next section discussing player types, and how games can be differently difficult to different players.

Using available materials, ask the students to provide examples of games they think are easy or hard, and place them in the list location accordingly.

After you receive around 10 examples, ask the students who provided the examples what makes those games easy or hard.

Then, based on the information you receive, try to come up with a rank order, from easiest to hardest, of the games in the list. Feel free to move games up and down in the difficulty order as they make suggestions.


Virtual Session

In a virtual environment, just have students post their thoughts to the chat of your collaboration platform, and provide comments/feedback and try to summarize their opinions.

The ultimate conclusion is: Everyone has a different perspective on what types of games are easy and hard. This is determined by...

Example Player Types

TEACHER LED

Casual Player
Genre-Experienced Player
Speedrunners/Competitive Players
Other ways of thinking about players

Discussion: Your Type and Your Player's Type

Ask students to think about what type of player they are. Then, ask them to try to imagine who they want to make games for, and how those people might be different from them as game players.

Player Flow and Difficulty Curve

TEACHER LED

Player Flow

Happens when a player is completely immersed in the game

To get a player to feel flow, you need to:

Provide instance rewards for good actions
Make sure the player always knows the goal
Give the player a sense of control over the game's outcome
Provide the player a challenge that matches their skill

Difficulty Curves

Keep the game difficulty high enough to keep the player interested

Don't make the game so difficult that the player feels they can't make progress

Platformer

SELF PACED
Students will learn:

How to navigate the Unity interface
How to quickly add and modify objects to make a level
+ A quick look at mods we can make in the future


Other Teaching Notes:

If in a in-person session, encourage students to test each others' platformer games ones they have completed one level. Then, have them rate how difficult it was.

Dungeon Crawler

SELF PACED
Students will learn:

How to create a dungeon using a tileset
How to add collectibles and enemies to the level
How to track the health of the player
How to create new levels


Other Teaching Notes:

Try to have students create one very easy beginner level (maybe even no enemies), a moderately difficult level, then a very hard level. That way they can see the difficulty curve in action.