Game Design Mastery Course, Fall 2024
Game Design Mastery Course, Fall 2024
Think Like A Game Designer
Want to Design Games With Me?
I’ve been teaching game design for over a decade, but it's one thing to read about or listen to lessons and another to put those lessons into practice. There is nothing more powerful than a community working towards common and exciting goals with structure and deadlines. Working with a team of driven, creative individuals makes game development even more accessible.
It's been over a year since we last opened the doors to the Think Like A Game Designer Mastery Course. My Stone Blade team, which is always heavily involved in the course, has spent the year working hard on SolForge Fusion and Ascension Legends, but now we’re ready to get back into the classroom and help you develop your game.
The Think Like A Game Designer course is a hands-on program where my team and I guide aspiring designers through the game design process, teaching the essential principles and techniques needed to succeed in the industry. This course is designed to transform you from someone who dreams of making games into someone who brings them to life.
Pitch Your Game to Real Publishers
This semester, we’re excited to bring back Pitch Day—a rare opportunity to pitch your game to real publishers. Previous Pitch Day publishers have included Brotherwise Games, AEG, Renegade Games, and of course, Stone Blade Entertainment. Don’t worry; we’ll prepare you thoroughly before you present your game. Stick with the program, and you’ll have a prototype, sell sheet, and pitch ready to go.
We’ve also got new lessons about building organized play programs and the details of developing interesting custom components for your games, like miniatures, fancy dice, unique cards, and complex game boards.
And, of course—I’ll be there to teach you in person through weekly mastermind calls.
The course will include two types of Masterminds:
Monthly Masterminds with me, Justin Gary, members of the Stone Blade Team, and likely some guest game designers.
The second will be weekly accountability masterminds, where you’ll set goals and get motivated by your fellow students and my team members. I’ll also occasionally join these to check in and share more lessons related to your projects.
Our private Discord features a playtest calendar where you can play and receive feedback on a Tabletop Simulator version of your game. Even if you’ve never used Tabletop Simulator before, we’ll ensure you’re fully set up for playtesting. This Discord also serves as the hub for our community of game designers from previous courses, and I can’t emphasize enough how incredible these people are—encouraging, positive, constructively critical, and unbelievably creative.
This is only a fraction of what we’re offering in the course. If you want to learn more, check out the full details here.
As a special bonus for being a free subscriber, use the code JG24 for 20% off tuition.
Since the course began in 2019, we’ve hired four students full-time. They’ve become awesome designers and have given us new perspectives on every aspect of the school, and we’re excited to announce the second year of our scholarship program.
The course itself is fairly high-priced, and there’s a good reason. First, it takes a lot of my team’s time to run and manage the course, time which we’re not spending focused on our own designs. Second, spots in the program are limited, and the course is becoming more popular every semester. If we admit too many students into the program, they won’t get the attention we believe they deserve.
Of course, high entry prices lead to another problem: the price makes the program inaccessible to many who can’t afford it but dream of becoming game designers. That’s why we’re excited to offer the Think Like A Game Designer Scholarship Program.
How to Apply
The scholarship program offers significant discounts to students passionate about game design. To apply, all you need to do is fill out this form:
Answer the questions as best you can. We ask for prototypes and sell sheets, but they are optional—students enter this program at all different points in their designs.
We’re looking for a passion for games, a desire to learn, and an open mind. We will review all the applications and decide which applicants get scholarships as a team. We always reserve spots in the program for scholarship holders.
We will personally email the scholarship winners by August 30th. The course begins on September 4th with a Kickoff Mastermind call led by me, Justin Gary.