When I was a child, I remember absolutely loving video games. My older brother and I used to play on our GameBoys and GameCube so often that my parents instituted a “game day” where the only day of the week we were given time to play our video games was Saturday. Playing games with my older brother and father on these Saturdays is a core memory from my childhood that will stick with me for the rest of my life. But somewhere along the way, with school and other activities ramping up, I lost sight of my love for games. I became so busy with other things in my life that video games were put to the side for a while, other than the occasional days where I’d boot up my video games and play just for a little while to remember those childhood days.
This class revived that love for me again. I had never taken any formal classes on game design up until now, nor did I know much about it. But hearing Christina and the CAs and my classmates all talk about games that I once loved through the lens of a game designer, I was reminded again of how much I loved games. And now I knew the reasons why I thought certain games were so much fun — when I played Pokemon, I grew an attachment to my Pokemon and felt as though they were a reflection of myself, which I now know formally as the “expression” type of fun. When I would play Zelda with my dad, the satisfaction of completing difficult puzzles and defeating challenging bosses with him is unforgettable, which I now know formally as the “challenge” type of fun. Re-exploring all the past games I had played in my childhood through this new lens was a really interesting and fun experience for me, and I aimed to implement the class concepts I had learned into the games that I would create for this class.
Unfortunately, trying to replicate the fun from the games that I loved playing growing up was definitely, definitely much harder than it seemed right off the bat. Actually thinking about how to create good game balance, the right type of fun that isn’t too challenging and isn’t too easy, and many more elements of game design proved to be quite difficult, but thankfully I had great teammates for both projects that had really interesting ideas to be able to bounce off of. Though the start of both projects were a bit rocky in trying to figure out what exactly we envisioned our game to look like, once we formalized it, the rest went much smoother. With a clear direction, ideas formed organically that we incorporated along the way of our design process, and after working through some kinks pointed out in our playtests and feedback from our CAs, my teams and I were able to create games that we are quite proud of.
Moving forward, I intend to continue exploring my love of games. I am thankful that this class was able to revive that love for me, after having put it aside a long time ago. I hope to continue playing games through the lens of a game designer, and perhaps venture into creating my own one day!
