Introduction to game design in the large classroom

We present an experience report on teaching a large enrollment course at the University of California, Santa Cruz providing an introduction to game design. Created to attract non-Computer Science majors seeking to satisfy their campus general education requirements, the course has several interesting qualities. These include a requirement to create a working game (as opposed to just a paper design), use of a specialized form of blogging called gamelogs to reflect on game design, and integration of course assignments with a university library collection of computer games. Experience with using a non-computer-based game design project as a final exam is described. Course contents and student demographic information are also presented.