Prior to this class, the majority of my gaming took place on a Nintendo DS in my pre-teen days. Although I would occasionally play with my friends on their consoles, my technology ended with the Wii. My only exposure to game design came through my uncle, who worked on the visual design of several games such as Call of Duty and NBA 2K. Seeing the amount of artistic skill that my uncle put into each piece he created led me to believe that I would never be able to contribute to the design of a game, especially with my lack of experiencing actually playing games.
The importance of critical plays was not apparent to me at first glance. Although I was excited to try new games throughout, it was not initially clear to me what exactly I could learn while playing these different games, especially the digital ones. I was shocked when I walked away from games that I had played dozens of times with new takeaways that directly related to course concepts. When playing poker with my friends, I witnessed players attribute strokes of luck to their own personal skill. Through Super Smash Bros, I saw how a diverse array of character options can help to more comfortably bring women, especially nongamers, into the toxic gaming community. I observed how a nonobvious social dynamic can affect games such as Among Us. Through playing all of these games, I was able to improve upon the games within my own groups. For example, in my P2, players collaborating on the puzzles instead of dividing and conquering would promote this social dynamic, and would also help to efficiently complete the puzzles required.
On the topic of my own games, the two projects in this class helped me to grow as a game designer, product manager, and overall member of a group. For P2, one of our biggest challenges was determining which puzzles we wanted to use, as everyone had their own separate ideas, myself included. Being able to work as a group of five and cut out some excess puzzles, even if they were someone’s personal favorite was certainly difficult, but we were able to reason through by determining which puzzles most strongly related to our narrative and provided a mechanic that was not apart of any other puzzle. This was made even more challenging when you take into account that I had never before met any of my group members!
Learning to work so well with a group of people that I had no previous relationships with truly helped me to grow as a designer. Taking a deeper dive into childhood favorites like Plants vs Zombies also completely changed how I view games, and inspired a new passion within me.
Next time, I want to take a deep dive into a fully digital game. I have absolutely zero experience with Unity, but this class has inspired me to pursue this new area of computer science. While I did not consider myself a gamer when I entered this class, I will leave for the summer motivated to purchase a console that has been made in the past 10 years in order to continue playing new games.
