Video: Learning Through Play

Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Hassan Lopez, a game designer with popular titles such as Clockwork Wars and Maniacal to his name, debuted a Tabletop Game Design course at Skidmore this past spring. Students with a wide variety of majors and interests explored theoretical and practical concepts relevant to game design, then created four playable games of their own over the course of the semester.

The new “IdeaLab” course – categorized by both the innovative nature of the teaching format and the use of Skidmore’s Schupf Family IdeaLab, the campus’s premier makerspace – was a hit with Lopez's students, who deeply engaged with the innovative yet rigorous curriculum.

“The secret ingredient to this class was having that really nice combination of intellectual discourse about game design – like really digging deeply into game design principles – then adding on this creative hands-on building element that they could take advantage of the IdeaLab for,” Lopez says. “And that mix I think is very satisfying to Skidmore students especially – to all young people. That ability to think deeply and converse about something you’re reading or have a conversation with somebody else about something you’re passionate about, then actually translate that into building something.”