Back to the topic at hand, has anyone with game development experience in addition to the OP looked at the Cornell link and able to comment on it?

Since the site explicitly states that the lecture slides alone aren't sufficient, it lists Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games as the textbook - anyone read it? It seems to have good reviews on Amazon.

The slides look educational. They cover a lot of material. They don't look "wrong". There are gaps and incomplete areas, but that is normal for education. You write to teach concepts first, and only after the concepts are well-understood do you try for comprehensive study.

Note the course number, it is a 3rd year course. You are expected to have the prerequisites gained in the first and second year. Also note that MANY university CS teachers place their slides on their websites, so you can easily augment them with similar studies from schools around the world.

I don't have the book, but based on the reviews and such it also seems like typical educational fare. It is better than nothing, and if you are working with matching course materials it can be good for students.


As was touched on above, people are usually most motivated by immediate threats (such as deadlines), so following the course as a dedicated student with deadlines is likely to be better than just getting the materials, stuffing them in folder somewhere, and saying that eventually you might read them. Some people are better students than others. Some students are barely motivated enough to read the materials; other students read the required materials, the recommended materials, commentaries on both, and even experiment with a few examples, all before the class starts.