Before this class, game design was very intimidating to me. My mind immediately jumped to the complex video games I used to play like Civilization or the incredibly creative board games like Catan and Chameleon. I also didn’t realize that game design was way more than a concept and a theme — I never thought that game designers meticulously plan seemingly “chance” occurrences through careful analysis of probability or they thought critically about how information is delivered or how the players should be having fun.
Through the course of this class, though I still remain in awe of those game designers, the idea of game design felt a lot more approachable to me. Understanding how exactly to construct a game from ideation to a fully-fleshed concept to playtesting was an amazing process. I particularly appreciated the emphasis on playtesting. In other HCI classes, sometimes it felt like you went into a round of user testing having an idea of what you might need to change. I would often think “oh I should have known that” after testing. But, with playtesting, not only was it incredibly gratifying to see people play your game and have fun, especially with the second project, I also felt like I was learning more about game design as I did it. I learned how people interacted with clues, what people did when they came across a challenging task and more. It felt like each playtest helped me not only improve my game but also informed my knowledge on designing games. The idea of different narrative types also resonated with me — I had seen narrative games as very similar to each other but differentiating them allowed my group to craft a unique narrative in our P2. Centering the embedded-narrative and working outwards helped us flesh out our game and make it a challenging yet enjoyable experience.
Through the process of game design and this class, I found understanding and setting the level of difficulty and challenge very hard. As I was designing in the first and the second project, I was constantly thinking about whether the game was too easy or too hard and found it difficult to set the appropriate level. I think for both projects I found myself constantly trying to make the game more difficult by introducing more steps in a round or more puzzles. Sometimes, it also felt like we were getting conflicting information from playtesting in regards to difficulty. I overcame these challenges by firstly remembering that challenge was not the only type of fun present in these games. A game could be challenging but also fun to play with others and creative. Making a game too challenging could make it not fun. I also had to rely on playtesters to overcome this — when we got conflicting information, I tried to think of my target audience and whether our playtesters fit them. Were they experienced gamers and therefore did it appear easy? Or were they complete novices?
I think I definitely became more creative in this class through working on these games. While I don’t consider myself artistically creative, working on these games forced me to think outside of the box and come up with different approaches to problems. In our escape room for P2 especially, thinking about unique ways to use the space and the tools we had at our disposal forced me to think outside of the box and come up with creative puzzles.
If I were to keep working on my games, I would love to delve into digital game making. Our final P2 was hybrid but mostly analog. Playtesting in class showed me how creative and talented so many of my classmates were in developing digital games. I think it would be really cool to learn how to use the tools needed to create those games.
I really appreciated the time and effort the CAs and Christina took in making this a really fun class. They were always ready to give feedback and answer any questions and gave some amazing lectures!
