While the quality of the lecturer/professor and content production remain high and engaging, this discipline's ROI, value, and learning potential are degrading rapidly.

This section seems almost entirely filler, and although I acknowledge that my opinion is partly due to myself not being the target market; the assignment sections don't really even match up with the course content. (i.e. what does creating a game-specific competitive analysis have to do with corporation structures and resume writing?). This was a catch-all bucket of highly subjective content which while at times interesting, was extremely irrelevant to the learning and development I'm seeking/expecting; and that lack of ROI on my time is further destroyed by the activeness and peer-review elements of this class.

At the third class in this specialization, I've seen my willingness and effort for each assignment deteriorate. Are these courses dead? (the discussion boards are nothing but spammed links to review assignments from every corner of the earth). The feedback returned from peers is not substantial to improve, and especially with an entire class/section of purely subjective course assignments. In fact, I find myself in some sort of "pod", perhaps a result of timing, of receiving the same feedback from the same two-three people, and always in a position of not having any peer assignments to review myself (so I'm forced to go back to a dead forum and pull links of old students' requests for review, just to complete the course). Where are the actual admins and professional mentors/instructors?

Overall, I was happy with the learning and new information I received via the first course improving my hard/technical skills. While the second course was more subjective, it was still value-add and incredibly interesting, despite the peer+activeness critiques I elaborated on above. However, I felt this third course was an absolute waste of my time (maybe not so for others, fine), and there's really no tangible ROI to putting in the time or effort here other than trucking through this for the sake of completing the Coursera Discipline.

I remain eager and excited for the subsequent courses; as receiving structured guidance towards a Capstone project seems like worthwhile endeavor towards learning and development. Overall, through other courses on other sites like Udemy, this does not seem like something worth spending money on at this point - you just paying for pre-recorded videos with a university's logo slapped on them (albeit from an engaging and passionate professor), outdated/dead links, and almost 0 active students. The courses on Udemy are better managed, updated, and have communities of learners. This series could be posted to Youtube for free and have the same impact - to this point anyway :(

This course covers the basics of games business, but is clearly aimed at people with no previous work experience in the games industry. If you're already a professional thinking of starting your own company, you'll find some interesting information but a lot of it will also be redundant. I'd also like to point out that the Week 3 assignment requires you to produce a 30-60 second video with a recommended time of 2 hours, which is clearly unrealistic if you expect to produce quality work.

Very good course giving more than an overview of games development, which is what it takes to survive in this creative industry. Reality of games development.

Great way to introduce the business of games. Gave me a very thorough understanding of the biggest questions one has about how money works in the industry.

The content of this course is pretty valuable and important for game developers. Everybody wants to be creative and enjoy making games, but it's still a business and you want to make money, right? I went into the course not really expecting to be interested in anything, but a lot of the material was very insightful and will surely help me in the future.

Note: The material is mostly US centric, so if you're somewhere else, you'll have to put in some extra work to find out how some of the stuff works in your country.

The one thing that I didn't like about this course was that some of the projects didn't have much to do with the material taught during that week and many students were a bit lost on what to do exactly. Don't get discouraged, because everyone is in the same boat. Just see it as a challenge and do some research outside of the course, talk to people on the forums and it'll be fine.

I was most excited about taking this class (in fact, it's how I found the specialization as a whole) and I did not get as much out of it as I was hoping for. :-\ I think that it's geared to too wide of an audience, so we didn't get as specific as I was anticipating. I also felt that a lot of the time of the videos were taken up by telling us what not to do. ("You don't want to be too far to this side, but you don't want to be too far to the other side, right?") I did get some good information out of this class, but I found a disconnect between the lectures and the homework. When we were assigned an elevator pitch as an assignment, it might have been nice to have seen some examples of elevator pitches--what makes a good (or a bad) elevator pitch? What kind of things would be a good idea to include? Concrete examples would have been super helpful. Submitting my homework and then seeing that other people did vastly different stuff made me question my own submission (Did we just take it in a different direction or did I (or they) misunderstand the assignment?) but since we're all peer reviewing, it's a case of the blind leading the blind there. This also happened with the SWOT Document...which I don't think was even mentioned in the lectures at all in-depth. Again, it would have been helpful to have seen some concrete examples, as I've never heard of that document before.

This course tries to cover the many aspects around the games industry. But the coverage in each of the subject is not deep enough to be useful. For example, the instructor talks about project management, public speaking, how to write a resume etc. The instructor starts by talking about why they are useful, and then followed by one to two 10-15 minutes long video lectures. Each of these could worth a full Coursera course and I am sure the other courses have better coverage than in this course.

The quiz questions are not well thought and do not stimulate thinking at all. Some of the "correct" answers are personal opinions but you have to choose them in order to pass the quiz.

The third peer grading assessment asks students to post a video either to pitch himself/herself or to pitch the game the student makes. However, the specialization up to this point does not equip student with the skills beyond the basics. Unless you are already in the industry, I do not think anyone can make anything impressive to be worth pitching in front of the audience.

Of the courses in the Game Development Specialization, none of them prepared me for what it would be like financially to make a game and create a name for myself as a developer. Not only does the course cover ways on how to finance making a game or game studio, it gives students resources they can use as reference when planning to make a business of their own or joining an existing business (such a a AAA studio or small game studio), and what pros and cons each decision may have for them. The coursework was thorough, and I enjoyed my time in the course.

O curso é muito bem trabalhado e cheio de conteúdo. Se você quer aprender como entrar no mundo dos desenvolvedores de jogos, além das habilidades técnicas, irá precisar aprender sobre negócios e esse curso irá te dar as ferramentas para iniciar nessa jornada. Só tenho uma ressalva, em alguns momentos fiquei com a impressão de que o curso focou muito no padrão americano, o que não me ajudou muito, mas entendo os motivos para que isso tenha sido feito e mesmo dessa forma me auxiliou a procurar os conteúdos relativos referentes ao meu país.

I was pretty wary of this course from a past experience with this teacher in a previous course, but i must say he nailed it, he has manage to create great videos with concise information that will help you understand the topics at hand, and unlike his previous course they are not a chore to sit through ;), it really shows the quality was always there but some focus was missing, this really is a great course and a teacher i feel ashamed for judging so quickly.

Despite I'm not really a business person, Casey did really well. Better than in the previous course. I was shocked to be honest. He got a lot of good points here, delivered excellent reading materials. I found myself in a rabbit hole of the stuff he brought us.

I learnt a lot here and could probably use this information into the company I've been working on. I don't regret taking this course and I'm glad I didn't drop out.

During the first week the assignments for the week was not even remotely associated with the content we learn throughout the week. For individuals who wish to learn about the video game industry but are not avid video game players or well read in its trade magazines, this is a bit frustrating. This slightly improved in following weeks. Besides that, the course is stellar.

This course presented a wealth of information, with each week containing enough material for its own course. There were numerous varied skills to be unpacked. The pace and density of the class challenged my focus, and the presentation portion took me out of my comfort zone. As a result, I am more confident in my ability to successfully develop and market a game.

This course is the definitive test for game development enthusiasts. It brings the reality component to the business aspect of games, presents students with a set of tools to come up with a well thought out business plan, and gives valuable insights and recommendations on how to approach jobs in the games industry.

For this lecture I give 5 star is because it talks the whole picture of game industry, and talks many soft skills game developers should consider. All of these things are usually ignored by many developers while the professors tells this to us by his own experience and knowledge from the industry

when i was started the course intially i faced a problem of communicating with people and i didn't know what is trade mark and so on but when i just the course i learned how to documented a particular product details and enjoyed a lot and i gain so much of information from this cousre

Very good course, i really like this teacher. For those who have some working experience some parts like looking for a job is less interesting... As a feedback, I would perhaps like to have a part about the game production process, roles involved. Could be great.

Professor O'Donnell is always brilliant, giving well planned and interesting classes. Although I have my doubts if I would include this topic in such a short Specialization, the course itself is great, witty and will teach you important things about the business.

Excellent! It was one of the best lessons I ever had. I was captivated in every minute of class given by the teacher, as well as learning about the importance of documenting every project, facilitated by the templates provided. Thank you for everything.

This course is a must if you're interested in game development and want to take it to the next step of getting serious, but don't know much about business or where to start to get that kind of information. Lots of useful information and exercises.

Out of the four courses in this specialization, this was the one I learnt the most from. To be honest, I don't really like business topics, and I felt a little bored, but the information in this course is too relevant for you to just skip aside.

Very interesting topics that are useful not only for the game industry but for anyone that wants to be a professionist in the future. I was not planning to join the game industry, but this video kind of motivated me to do so in the future.

It is a very good course that covers multiple things, most of them would take an entire course to learn all the aspects but the teacher does a great effort to point most of the important things for the business.

Good experience and very informative.

suggestion: it would have been better if a hands-on experience is added to this course.

like how to publish a simple 2d game and adding in-app purchase techniques.

I loved this course, the teacher Casey O'Donnell has a good way of expressing points of view. Explain the class like you there in person, individually. No doubt I will buy your book Developers Dilemma.