According to Brenna Nicely, the course's performance instructor, this is the first year that ANE 103 has had a "game design" group (it was previously known as the "performance" group). Whereas in 2016 the group performed a literary adaptation of the famous Gilgamesh scene, this year the goal was to have more engagement with a greater number of ancient sources. Most of these sources tend to focus on feasting, social order, and the like, so the challenge was for students to design games centered on feasting. This precipitated into the task of translating ancient sources into a game format, which was a new and unique challenge involving multiple types of learning (visual, performance, etc.).
The type of games that students could design would then depend on the sources they used. For example, sources highlighting the social aspect of feasting in ancient Mesopotamia might be useful for developing game characters. For a board game, architectural research might inspire board design. Knowledge of ancient food could impact several game facets, such as resource management.
This year there are three sub-groups, each of which decided what type of game they wanted to design, finding relevant sources to fit each game idea.
