Week 2 — Sep 1 — Game Pitches (live)

Milestone: Game Pitch (5 pts) — live, 3 minutes plus 2 minutes Q&A, with one reference image. Students also choose their project track today (2D, Puzzle, Narrative, 3D, or VR).

Why it's early: the syllabus is explicit that pitches happen in Week 2 specifically so the rest of the semester's lectures can be weighted toward the genres actually in the room — a class heavy on narrative pitches gets more emphasis on Week 9's DialogueTrigger content, a class heavy on 3D gets earlier informal mentions of NavMesh and Cinemachine 3D.

Lecture topics, expanded

Live Game Pitches. The exercise block today is the pitch session itself, not a new build — three minutes forces a pitch down to hook, core verb, and one reference image, which is exactly the discipline the One Sheet (due Week 4) will ask for again in writing. Critique in the room should focus on scope realism as much as concept — the syllabus's scope warning ("a finished small game outscores an unfinished ambitious one") is worth saying out loud today, before anyone's committed to a semester of overreach.

Project organization and version control. Folder structure conventions (Scripts / Prefabs / Scenes / Art, consistently named) set up before a project has enough files to make disorganization painful. GitHub or Perforce account setup per the syllabus — today is signup and a first commit, not a deep Git lesson.

Naming and folder conventions. A consistent prefix or suffix scheme (SO_MovementTuning, PF_Player) pays off most in a project with ScriptableObjects and prefabs mixed together, which is every project in this class by Week 5. Cheap to establish now, expensive to retrofit in November.

Connecting it forward

Today's track choice quietly determines a lot of what follows: Narrative-track students should already be thinking ahead to Ex 6 (Week 9) as their real design artifact, VR-track students need to know the build target locks by Week 12, and everyone should leave today with the One Sheet's five fields (hook, genre, platform, audience, core loop) answerable from what they just pitched.