BIOGRAPHY

A twelve-year veteran of the game industry, Marc LeBlanc spent the bulk of his career at LookingGlass Studios. There, he was a core contributor to several award-winning game titles, including the Thief and System Shock series. His roles included Programmer, Game Designer and Project Leader. Later he joined Visual Concepts, where he contributed technology to the Sega Sports titles, and also helped develop original game concepts. At present, he works as a game designer and programmer at Mind Control. In collaboration with Andrew Leker, he developed Oasis, the 2004 Independent Games Festival Game of the Year in the web/downloadable category. He lives in charming bungalow in Berkeley, CA, where he can frequently be found getting trounced by his peers at German board games. Marc attended MIT, where he was awarded a masters in Computer Science, and the rank of Master Assassin. He has lectured on game design at conferences and universities, and runs an annual two-day game design workshop at the Game Developers' Conference.

ABSTRACT

Game Design Workshop
Workshop, Thursday (10:45 - 12:15) in Hall of Ideas E

This workshop is based a two-day tutorial taught annually at the Game Developers Conference. Attendees will break into small groups to play, discuss, brainstorm and tune a game.

Using the MDA framework, we will analyze a game in terms of its mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics. Then we will re-design this game, concentrating on the connection between player experience and fiction. Through this activity, attendees learn to view games analytically, approaching them as systems which can be analyzed, evaluated and improved.

Idea Takeaway: Attendees leave this workshop with new abstract tools for analyzing and tuning games, and strategies for communicating about these core concepts with others.