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PROFESSOR: The students spend
about six hours in class

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each week.

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And right at the
beginning of the semester,

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most of those six hours are
either lectures or activities

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or workshops that
we have planned

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to have inside the class.

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It's very, very
tightly programmed.

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This may involve, say,
brainstorming for the team

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projects, or forming
up with teams,

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going through the
project constraints,

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or teaching them the techniques
that we want them to learn.

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Near the end of the
semester, we heavily

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scale back the program content.

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We give students a
lot of class time

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just to meet up with the teams.

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Because for many,
many teams, it's

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difficult enough to gather
six people in the same room,

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in the same place,
at the same time.

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To get eight of them
in the same room,

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well, they're doing
it during class time.

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At least you know everybody's
going to be there.

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So we try to give as
much time as possible

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later in the semester for
teams to actually work

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on their project.

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But sometimes that is planned
out, like playtest sessions,

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for instance, where students
play each other's games.

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PROFESSOR: In the first
half of the semesters,

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all the lectures and workshops
are given by the staff.

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But by the second
half of the semester,

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we're getting them to see other
aspects of game development.

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So within MIT
students-- and actually,

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this year, a few Wellesley
students-- most of our students

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are going to be coming to us
with a programming background.

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A few might have some design
classes under their belt.

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Maybe they've taken one
of our game design classes

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or another design
class offered at MIT.

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Some of the students are
going to have some art

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aptitude, visual art aptitude.

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Some, a little bit more a sound
design or music composition

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aptitude.

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But for the most
part, they don't know

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what it's like to be an artist.

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They don't know what it's
like to be a sound designer

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on a game development project.

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And they might actually
not know anything

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about the business of games.

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So the last half of the semester
is bringing in guest lecturers

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from the industry.

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We've got a great network here
in Boston, an independent game

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developer network.

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Also, quite a few of the
AAA larger studios are here.

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So we mine our
network in each year.

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We get new speakers
to come talk to them

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about how to work
with an artist,

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how to work with a sound
designer, what it actually

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means to be an art
director in a game company,

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or what actually does it
mean to even be a level

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designer on a large project?

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But then also, we're
bringing people in

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to talk about business models.

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Kickstarter is often
an interesting topic

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for the students.

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We try to balance
it between here's

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what the industry
what looks like,

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and here's the
things that are going

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to help you, right now, with
the game that you're working on

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now.

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And if you wanted to take
the game a little bit further

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after the course, here's the
things that you could do.

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Things like fundraising,
submitting it to festivals,

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marketing it, and just getting
other people to play it.