Final Class Reflection

Before I took this class, I did not play any games really. My boyfriend is an avid gamer and I would always see him spending a lot of times on games. I never understood what he got out of it, so I decided to take this class to be able to understand his love for games better.

But boy was I in for a surprise. I had virtually no clue that so much went into ensuring that you create a good game. As a (very infrequent) player, I did not understand what all it takes to ensure that players have a smooth experience. I never thought of the experience as a game designer.

The society perceives games as having no value, but that is FAR form the truth.

The concepts that will stick with me (and how I incorporated them into my work)

  1. MDA – This really helped me dissect games and understand them at a much deeper level. This was very helpful for the critical plays as well as ideating and designing my own games for the class.
  2. Sketch noting – I was so scared to sketch note earlier. But find it so helpful to retain information now. I use it for readings for my other classes as well.
  3. Play testing – I only truly understood the importance of play testing when I had to play test for the games that my group created. Play testing allowed me to step away from my biases and get very real feedback from people who are not familiar with the game. This was critical in ensuring that the final gameplay is smooth and error free.
  4. Iterate – You will never create the perfect game in the first try – it is important to take feedback and iterate. That is the only way you grow. Seeing newer iterations of my games be so much better than the original versions helped me realise the importance of iteration.

I did not really experience any major challenges, I had a very smooth experience. One things though – I wish we could have had a class on Unity and digital game design. It seems so cool (but intimidating as well 🙁 ) and I would have loved to learn more about creating digital games. I believe if I continue working on games, I will definitely explore digital game design 🙂

I think the best takeaway for me was being able to have difficult conversations with team members who were not pulling their weight. The old me would just avoid having that conversation and would instead, do the teammate’s share of the work (and then be salty about it). But once I had this conversation, I realised how liberating it is and I am never going back!!

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