The goal of the final exam in the GDD History of Videogames class is to help us remember everything we have learned over the course of the semester and specifically, important details about some of the most historically important games. Thus the goal of the final game is to help learn and cement in our memories the most important titles and their unique features. The members of the first class at Quinnipiac University's to take the course worked with Professor Elena Bertozzi to come up with the following rules for the game.
Each student is responsible for writing a hint card for 5 games (2 determined by the student and 3 assigned by Bertozzi). Each card should include:
On the day of the exam, we gather in the classroom seated in a large circle. Each student has 3 stacks of blank colored cards and one stack of 5 wildcards which can be played at any time. Students write their initials on the cards. They will place their 5 game hint cards face down on the table in front of them. The Professor goes around the table and takes away 2 cards from each player. The cards remaining are the student's games for the first and second rounds of the game. Each student picks a card for the first round, and the game begins.
The first student on the left of the professor reads the year, publisher and hardest hint on the selected game card. All other students have the option of choosing to try to identify the game by picking a hard color blank card, filling it in with their answer and giving the card to the professor. Then the student reads the next hint and cards are collected, and then the final hint is read and the cards are collected. If a student has played his/her answer card and then realizes it was wrong s/he can choose to play one of the wildcards for a potential 3 points if the answer is correct. Answer cards will be stacked with the appropriate question card for scoring after the game is over. This continues around the table until all students have read their cards and all answer cards have been collected. After a short break, there is a second round with the second game cards, then the third round.
Given that there are 14 students in the class, each student will answer 13 questions each round for a total of 39 questions. The total number of points possible for the exam is (39 x 5) 195 if a player gets every question correct at the hardest hint level - only Game Gods can achieve this. If a student gets all the questions correct at the 2nd level hint they get 156 points which out of the 150 possible is an A. If a student gets all the answers at the easiest level they get 117 points which is a C. The number of points will be totaled at the end of the exam and the student's score is their grade for the final.