A full game design studio, rebuilt from an MIT course so anyone can walk in cold and start making games today. Pick the way you learn best. Same path, three doors.
You build something playable in the first hour. Theory shows up to explain what your hands already did.
A game that flops in playtest is not a bad grade. It is the most useful information you will get all week.
Not too much, not too little. Each stop is one idea you can actually hold, then use the same day.
No fees, no gatekeeping, no degree required. The source is MIT. The door is wide open.
Every track teaches the same 11 stops and the same three build challenges. The difference is how the material reaches you. Switch any time using the nav up top.
Learn through icons, diagrams, and one-glance concepts. Every idea gets a picture you can redraw from memory and apply to your own game on the spot.
Open the visual track →A spoken course scripted for an AI tutor to read aloud. Plain language, no jargon walls, built for listening on the bus or while you sketch your next prototype.
Open the audible track →The full written course. We took MIT's academic phrasing and rebuilt it into a readable rulebook that talks like a person who actually loves this stuff.
Open the maniacal track →This is the spine every track follows. The three dark stops are build challenges where you ship a real, playable game.
Three companion resources for when you want the source thinking, a way to grade the work, or real games to study. Built for learners and for anyone running this as a cohort.
The real MIT reading list, mapped to each stop on the path, with a line on why each book or paper earns your time. Two are free to read right now.
Open the canon →How to grade this course without ever grading "fun." The four artifacts, full rubrics, a playtest-day protocol, and a self-check for solo learners.
Open the rubric →Real games to study, one shelf per concept, each with the single thing to watch for while you play. Play is study, not a break from it.
Open the playlist →FIRST PLAYABLE is rebuilt from MIT CMS.608 / CMS.864 Game Design (Spring 2014) by Philip Tan and Richard Eberhardt, published through MIT OpenCourseWare. We kept the studio structure and the three core assignments, then rewrote the delivery from the ground up so a beginner can pick it up without a classroom, a fee, or a single prerequisite. The original material is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0, and so is this.