Final Reflection

Before this class, I wasn’t much of a gamer (in the general sense; I didn’t spend a lot of time playing many games) and never really critically though about the mechanics of the games that I did play.

Throughout the course of this course, I started developing more awareness of formal game mechanics while playing different games. The turning point was actually during lecture, when the teaching team addressed the class about how they wanted to us to approach critical plays. From then on, I tried hard to think about how different mechanics were conscious decisions made by designers, and why those choices were made.

Why did the designer choose to do X? If they instead chose to implement Y, how would that change the game?

 

I loved working on the two games in this class!! Compared to 147, I felt that the problems we were working on felt more creative yet meaningful (perhaps in a different way than 147). I guess this attests to what Christina always says about games and play being a fundamental part of human life. Since we get to see people playtesting our game, and we were genuinely invested in making our game fun, I felt really motivated and excited working on these projects!

For Project 2, I was motivated to start learning to create digital art. I have a background in oil painting, and so it was fun to work on art that I found really meaningful in a new medium (Procreate on iPad)!

Some of my personal favorites from Project 2:


Big shoutout to my teammates Graham, Josh, and Saljuk for making this class so interesting and fun! We joke about some time in the future one of us secretly developing and releasing our game into the world… but I wouldn’t be opposed to working on it in the future! I hope to continue to explore new games and engage with them critically, as well as continue working on my newfound craft (digital art may replace oil as my favorite medium).

Team Desdemona: (left to right, top to bottom) Josh, me, Saljuk, and Graham. I also worked with Josh and Graham for P1!

Thank you also to Christina, Kally, and Vincent for making this such a rewarding class!

 

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