Masterclass Game Design
| Arno Kamphuis and Mark Overmars |
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Copyright Simon Donkers 9 June 2004
On the 9th of June 2004 professor Mark Overmars and Arno Kamphuis gave a master class Game Design at the University of Utrecht. Within this story you will find some more information about the master class. Also you will find some exclusive information about GM 6.0. About 40 students visited this master class and also several computer science teachers accompanied them. The day consisted about several presentations by both Mark Overmars and Arno Kamphuis and also a practical part where you can design your own computer game. On the button of this page you will see some pictures taken during the day.
The master class was given mainly to get people thinking about Game Design. Within the master class Arno Kamphuis gave at the beginning a presentation about the history of computer games. Also he gave some information about games which where successful. After that Mark Overmars gave a presentation about what makes a successful game. In this also some successful games where discussed. Within this he also asked at the students to name up a few good games in their opinion and it was surprisingly how much Mark Overmars knew about those games. After that we had 3 hours the time to create our own game keeping the game design points in our heads and with advice of Mark Overmars himself. During this Mark Overmars also showed us Game Maker 6.0. He showed what new things changed within the interface. What new things where added, which things where changed. Some exclusive information about Game Maker 6.0 can be found below within the article 
. During this all we also had some time to ask Mark Overmars some questions about Game Maker. Such as why there is no 3D game maker. Why he is working on Game Maker. How Game Maker is built up. More below.
The master class started with an in-depth story about the history of computer games. Starting his presentation with the question: what was the very first game (Space Invaders) and then going up on the chronological ladder with Pong (first commercially published game) and so on until the present. The story was basically a summary of different games which where brought out and different consoles. I am not going to repeat the whole story here but a simple google search found me this article which seems to be about the same: You can find this at GameSpot. But also he added a few interesting things such as, in which year has Nintendo started: (a)1928 (b)1889 (c)1985 of (d) 1824. And a picture of the first person to make the ultimate highscore within Pacman. 