Having established the premise of game design as an analog for course and curriculum design, we must consider what it means to design a game and discuss just how it is done. There is no shortage of literature on the design of games, ranging from practical guides on professional game development to theoretical analyses of the components of games. What can be gleaned from a review of this literature is that defining what a “game” is and how to go about designing one remain topics of great debate. That is healthy of course, particularly as the exposure of video games increases and the discourse surrounding games continues to expand. The goal of this paper is not to resolve either of these debates. That being said, in order to draw direct comparisons there must be a stable framework from which to work, and a crucial part of that framework is a specific definition of a game.