Assessing creativity of game design students

The engineering disciplines are technical in nature, but that does not mean that engineers do not need to be creative. Engineering and science students could be asked to create new design ideas, but as they are still learning it might be bewildering for them to be confronted with too many choices. One solution might be to give them design constraints to help them focus their imaginations. In this study we asked students of game development to create small game designs, with or without extra constraints. They found it difficult to follow the constraints when asked to do so; and yet their creativity did not suffer when they did. The game designs were evaluated for creativity, novelty and quality, by a professor in the subject, but also by all the students themselves. The students were able to produce some creative designs, although some struggled to do so in the brief time they had. In peer assessment, they achieved good consistency amongst themselves, but diverged somewhat from the expert evaluator. The strongest performing students, however, also produced the most creative game ideas. This gives us confidence that both the creation and peer assessment exercises are worthwhile and informative, and potentially could benefit the students as they learn their discipline.