I took this class because I went to Symbolic Systems Advising office hours and talked about my interest in the intersections of storytelling and Computer Science. The advisor recommended that I take this class, because it would be a good mix of my interests. I didn’t think of myself as a gamer, but enrolled anyway to shop the class. When I attended the first lecture, I was hooked.
I really loved the critical plays, because they were a way to exercise my critical thinking skills and apply them in a novel and creative way. The class concepts that stuck out to me were the interdisciplinary lectures on probability, ludonarrative cohesion, and MDA (Mechanics Dynamics and Aesthetics).
I got to apply my storytelling skills in the P1 game very heavily, where we built a social deduction card game. I also learnt that I can be a good resource for narrative in games even though I never thought of myself as a gamer. Through the TAs’ lectures I was made cognizant of the need for different kinds of people to enter the game design space so that a more diverse set of games could be created to attract larger sets of audiences. That made me happy to understand. I always enjoyed when Christina made references to her personal life and previous academic experiences, as she is a cool person and I liked hearing about her. It was a lot of work to make sure the mechanics aligned with the narrative, but I think figuring that out through many late nights was my favorite part of the project process. The project really taught me how to handle group dynamics because this was the first time I was creating such a big project with such a large group of people, and making sure everyone and everything was accounted for was a taxing but ultimately rewarding process. The teaching team was very helpful and responsive, which I adore everyone for!!! I also got a chance to use my Figma skills to design something completely from scratch (as opposed to copying/redesigning) and while I still have a ways to go, I am happy I was able to use a skill that I have worked hard to learn these past two months…!
It was hard for me to stand my ground at times in a group full of grad students who seemed much more self-realized than I was, but after I got my P1 feedback and everyone told me I should voice my opinions more, I was more relentless for P2 and it paid. I still wish I was more vocal about wanting to make a chatbot, because there was resistance initially which made me drop the idea in favor of an Arduino component, but at the end of the day the responsibility for the digital component fell on me entirely as the Computer Science major and in the last four days, I was requested to make a chatbot!!! Which is why the Figma app prototype feels a little bit amateur – it was a last-minute addition.
If I were to redo this experience, I probably would not change much about P1 but I would make the physical and digital components of P2 more responsive to each other. P2 was definitely more involved in terms of engineering skill involved, which left the team too busy to work on the overall game – which is something that I feel resulted in different parts of the game feeling disjointed at times.
I had a star team, excellent TAs and overall created projects I was very passionate about and excited to share with the world. I am thankful for this experience, and looking forward to taking more classes with Christina in the future!
Best
Diya
