I have always considered myself as a casual gamer. This class has really demystified gaming and gamer culture to me. I used to believe in the “hardcore” game label and thought I wasn’t a “hardcore” gamer because I don’t play first-person shooter games despite the fact I game in some way almost everyday. I really enjoyed practicing applying design principles to interactions in a game format.
I always wanted to make a video game and in P2 alone I learned basic Unity and how to make 3D art in Blender. I really appreciated the opportunity to appreciate games of all kinds, shapes and forms. Taking the time to appreciate the world a video game has created from general world building to setting to architecture to music to lighting – it has made me appreciate and take in my physical surroundings in the real world in deeper. It has also sparked an interest in drawing and learning color theory so I can help unshackle my creativity.
This course helped me realize that I have a clean slate and the opportunity to basically pursue any career, why not have it be my dream job? Why not strongly consider this route and work towards it? I am planning to continue to work on my p2 video game, a long train ride, and use the things I learned in this course to build a game design portfolio.
P1 was cool and I definitely have an appreciation for board games, but I really wish that that course was formatted so that you can spend the whole class working on one digital game and it has a partner course that teaches Unity like how cs 147 has cs 47. There are so many aspects and design things we wanted to do with our game but we just did not have the time like adding more puzzles, connecting and fleshing out more dialogue, better onboarding, settings, etc. Especially in comparison with cs 147 and cs247b pacing where you get the whole quarter to work deeply on one project.
Christina and the TAs really inspired me and helped me better understand/connect with the gamer side of myself! I wish there were more classes on games at Stanford, but glad for the opportunity to work with the game center. I look forward to building on all the skills this course taught me and know that I will look back at this experience and credit it to so much.
