The Multiplayer Classroom

This is your detailed guide to designing any structured learning experience as a game. Written for professional educators or those learning to be educators, here are the tools to engage and excite students by using principles learned in the development of popular video games. Learn how to create multiplayer games for any age on any subject.

Lee Sheldon began his writing career in television as a writer-producer, eventually writing more than 200 shows ranging from Charlie's Angels (writer) to Edge of Night (head writer) to Star Trek: The Next Generation (writer-producer). Having written and designed more than forty commercial and applied video games, Lee spearheaded the first full writing for games concentration in North America at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the second writing concentration at Worcester Polytechnic Institute where he is now a professor of practice. The forthcoming CRC Press companion book, The Multiplayer Classroom: Game Plans, will feature fully annotated design documents from his more ambitious multiplayer and alternate reality games including the first online multiplayer classroom. Other games covered teach physical fitness, Mandarin and Chinese Culture and cybersecurity, a game where students must defend their university against attacks originating on the dark web. The third edition of Lee's book Character Development and Storytelling for Games, a standard text in the field, is also forthcoming from CRC Press. Lee is a regular lecturer and consultant on game design and writing in the U.S. and abroad. His most recent commercial game, the award-winning The Lion's Song, is currently on Steam.

Section 1 Introduction Quest 1 - Good Morning. You All Have an F. 3 Quest 2 - Games in the Classroom 11 Section 2 Multiplayer Classrooms Quest 3 - IU Theory and Practice of Game Design 23 Quest 4 - IU Multiplayer Game Design 55 Quest 5 - RPI Introduction to Game Design 75 Quest 6 - RPI Designing Interactive Characters (Valeria 1) 109 Quest 7 - More RPI Quests: Interactive Characters & Narrative (Archipelago 1) 141 Quest 8 - WPI Writing for Games I: Characters (Valeria 2) 165 Quest 9 - WPI Writing Characters for Interactive Media & Games (Sanctuary of the Sun) 183 Section 3 Game Design and Development Quest 10 - Identifying Learning Objectives and Student Needs 213 Quest 11 - Student Demographics 219 Quest 12 - How Games Are Designed 225 Quest 13 - Production 235 Section 4 After the Launch Quest 14 - Playing the Game 247 Section 5 After This Book Quest 15 - Designing the Future 257 Quest 16 - Resources 263 Appendix First Edition Case Studies