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PROFESSOR: I'm Sara Verilli.

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I'm the development director
at the MIT Game Lab.

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I came to the Game Lab
from the game industry,

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where I've worked as a producer
and a game designer and a QA

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person.

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I've done an awful
lot of jobs and seats.

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I've worked on Thief, Thief
1 and 2, Flight Ultimate.

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I started at Looking Glass.

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And that's actually where
most of my work was done.

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I then worked at
Irrational for a while.

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And that's when I
moved to the Game Lab.

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I came on to be a specialist
in production, production

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management, and QA testing.

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And those remain the areas
that I teach in the course,

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specifically.

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We all do a little
bit of everything.

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But I lead the lectures on
agile and organizing your team

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and keeping it running.

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And I also do a lot of the
testing lectures and focus

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testing lectures.

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What am I playing now?

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Right now I am not playing,
but I'm hoping to play soon,

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is the newest
release of Minecraft,

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which has bunnies in it,
which both I and my daughters

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are very excited about.

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So I am hoping
that tonight I will

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be able to actually go
home and arrange for a play

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session of Minecraft with them.

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I'm also playing a fair bit of
Sentinels of the Multiverse.

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And most recently, we've been
tackling the Pathfinders card

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game, which is
almost a way to play

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an RPG in a short
amount of time,

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except that takes almost as long
as a full session of playing

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a sit-down RPG so far.

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We'll see if we can get faster.

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Right now, I'm not actually
working on any games.

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I was working on a
climate change game.

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I'm moving away from
that, and trying

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to think about what is a
more interesting problem

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to work on, in the area of
not just teaching game design,

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but using game
design, using people

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learning game design to learn
other subjects, as well.

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So you can tie two
things together.

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And I'm playing around
with how do you teach that?

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How do you structure
a course that

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would do something like that?

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I'm actually really excited
to having a specific design

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question that we're asking
the kids, the students,

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to look more deeply into,
into making decisions

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for the player, and making
meaningful decisions.

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Because that's a part of games
that the simpler your game is,

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the harder it is to
invite your player

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to make meaningful decisions,
and to set up situations

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where they are making those.

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But that tends to
be the part of games

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that I, at least, find the
most interesting-- the places

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where I'm making
choices, and I can

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see how my choices have
completely sunk my ship

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or enabled me to win the game.

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I like knowing that I, I
have control of my destiny.

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And so getting the
students to get

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to explore that aspect of
games better and more deeper,

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I think, is really nice.

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I'm currently also working on
creating a game with the Step

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Lab Introduction to
Game Design on MIT EdX.

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I think it's 11.126x, is
the number, I believe.

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I've spend so much
time making the course,

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I have not been looking into
all the administrivia tack

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to do it.

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But working on that, trying to
condense a game course into six

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weeks, has been
really hard, and has

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made me really stop
and think about what

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is the actual important
things in game design?

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I would like games
to go-- well, they've

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already gone some of the
places I want them to go.

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Games that are looking at
more social-- integrating more

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social experiences.

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Games that aren't just--
board games where you're not

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just me playing
against everyone else,

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but you're playing
as a team, and you're

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playing cooperatively.

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And video games are
also doing that.

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They've been doing
that for years,

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in the massive multiplayer
games, and things like that.

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But seeing video games go more
for how do we work together?

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How do we make this a
more social experience?

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And what I really
love to see is games

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getting to the point
where players get

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to affect the games
back, especially

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in the RPG space, where if
I'm a big enough player, and I

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can now defeat everything
in the game trivially,

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can I go in and change
the game to make it more

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interesting for other players?

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Can I take some of that?

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And then, that actually
goes all the way back--

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that was already being
done back in MUDs, right?

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This not actually a new concept.

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It's just that
production quality

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has gotten so high that
you can't do that anymore.

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Well, with all the
tools coming online,

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can we bring that really
neat players giving back

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into the game and creating
experiences for other players?

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Maybe we can start bringing it
back into the high-end games,

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too.