The focus of the course will be game design and balancing in itself and gaming theory. There are many courses on how to program and structure the software of a game, but not on the design of the gameplay and game itself. The students will build a game in whatever medium they find most supportive of the gameplay they wish to design. This includes computer games, card games, and board games. Teams will be recommended, but not required. We will cover many balancing and testing techniques for games, including mathematical models of gameplay and automated testing. Live play testing will of course be included in this, as well as what kind of things generally require this. The course material will focus on digital games, primarily. Much of it will be applicable to other mediums, though not as readily since the methods will often benefit from computational speed.