Before this class, I thought about game design as a foreign language. It seemed exciting and fun, but so far removed from my identity and capabilities. Because I never played video games growing up, I didn’t consider myself a “gamer.” The first day in this class my ideas of what is a “game” changed immediately. We learned that games could be puzzles, narratives, explorations of space, and even ways to pass the time with friends. In that way, I began to see all the games around me and how I interacted with them. It was empowering to redefine “play” in my life and better understand concepts of “fun” and “enjoyment” through the learnings in this class.
During this class, I learned several exciting concepts that stuck with me such as the formal elements of game design, aesthetics of fun, types of narrative, game architecture, and visual elements of game design. I was able to implement these concepts into my work through the two projects of this class that I am extremely proud of. For Project 1, I was able to implement formal elements, aesthetics of fun, and visual design into my game “Champion of Dionysus.” This game was even inspired by the game Coup which I discovered in this class through a critical play. I was extremely proud of the visual design and social deception aspects of “Champion of Dionysus” specifically. For Project 2, I was able to not only build on P1 concepts but implement embedded narrative, game architecture/progression, and use of space in my escape room “Escape ResX.”
The most significant challenge (and reward) of this class was the constant iteration, specifically regarding design. I once read that “the challenge of being a creator is that there comes a time when your taste exceeds your capabilities.” I constantly felt this way during this class where I was balancing learning and creating games at a high fidelity. During P1, my team and I really struggled with creating the visual design and became very frustrated. Shana said something that stuck with me about overcoming this challenge: “art is a process and never-ending, so show yourselves compassion. Just because something is turned it doesn’t mean it’s finished.”
In this class, I grew as a designer, product manager, and team member. From a creative point of view, I now have stronger visual design and tone / mood design skills through practice in P1 and P2. More tactically, in both the projects of this class I had to manage teams of people I didn’t know. We had to work together to develop task management systems, open communication, and delegation. This quarter, I was working full-time as a product management intern and even my boss commented that the way I look at product problems and team conflict is different because of what I’ve learned in this class.
I want to keep working on game design in my future. I’ll continue iterating and playtesting my P1 game with my friends, as well as try to get the Stanford bookstore to carry Escape ResX to understand the process of selling games. I will keep working on game progression and overall game narrative for both of my games. In general, though, I will play more games. I barely scratched the surface of the amazing games out there in the world and I hope to spend more time learning and being inspired by those games.
