I’m really glad that I took this class this quarter even though I didn’t need another CS247 course to fill my HCI requirements. In my late elementary and early middle school years, video games on PC became really popular, and I have been wanting to play a wider variety games since then. In this class, I not only got to play different types of games with a more critical eye but also had the opportunity to design a couple games. Although the games I’ve so far played have still only scratched the tip of the iceberg, I feel a lot more confident about my knowledge of video games and game design.
Before taking this class, I viewed games mostly with a binary lens — video games were either fun or not fun, and most of the time a game being fun is equivalent to being addictive. Games like League of Legends and Candy Crush are some examples that fit my prior definition of fun. However, after taking this class, I feel that I have gained a good amount of vocabulary for analyzing a game’s elements and what makes it fun. Among the course concepts we learned, I particularly like the formal elements and the 8 types of fun because they seem to be general enough that I could analyze any game with these frameworks, but also specific enough that it feels very useful to use these frameworks to pick apart the characteristics of a video game.
Another valuable thing I learned is the importance of playtesting. I’m really proud of the work I put into both my P1 and P2 projects, and the playtests I ran with my teams played such a crucial role in the development of the games. For P1, my team and I created an analog board game with the theme of island survival. Since it was a social game, there was no way for us to tell whether the game is fun without playtesting. In the 2 full-length playtests we ran, we learned critical insight and received extremely helpful feedback on what was good about the design of the game and what could be improved to create a more fun dynamic both among the players and between the game and the players. For P2, I’m particularly happy that I got to create a full puzzle in my team’s escape room game that made use of all the skills. Since P2 required some part of digital component, I ended up relying on my music skills, coding skills, and maker skills to create a piano puzzle that involved two systems. (I won’t go into the puzzle details here, since it’s all in my team’s final writeup (Puzzle #8)) The most satisfying part was definitely hearing the playtesters say “Wow that’s so cool” and seeing them have fun solving the puzzle. After each playtest, I was able to make improvements on the puzzle design and system to create an even better experience for the next set of playtesters.
I’ve always felt a bit uncertain and insecure about my ability to be creative with things that don’t have a right or wrong answer, such as making art, writing, and designing things that are not task-oriented. After being exposed to a wide variety of games, learning concepts and vocabulary for analyzing games, and co-creating games that received positive feedback in this class, I feel more comfortable about taking steps to be creative with game design. In the future, I will certainly not hesitate to join any opportunities that involve designing, creating, and testing games.
