Creativity in the Game Design Classroom Author #1

The way we educate new game designers has profound implications for their later creativity and productivity – and for the health of the game industry as a whole. Will we turn out a generation of students who are comfortable with innovation in game design? Or will we teach them to make safe, conventional, predictable choices? In this workshop, we will collaborate to develop a working definition of creativity as it relates to games education. What do we really mean when we talk about creativity? Scholars from Amabile to Weisberg have different approaches, and we will draw on their ideas as we define what we hope to achieve, both for ourselves and for our students. Next, we will get to know a variety of structured approaches to creativity in a hands-on way. We will experiment with guided brainstorming, de Bono's Six Thinking Hats, the incubation model and more. What are the benefits of different structured creative processes? What are the limitations of each? What are the limitations of using structured approaches in the first place