Before 247G, I had a really weird relationship with video games. I liked them in theory. I’d enjoyed watching games when I was younger, interned at a game company, and even attempted to develop of game of my own (which led me to study CS graphics here!). As someone interested in computer graphics, digital art, and storytelling, video games seemed like the perfect hobby for me. But, I never enjoyed playing them and had given up on trying to engage with the world of video games fully. On the other hand, I loved playing social games. I’d play codenames with my friends every night of the pandemic and had bought several versions of UNO to play at home. I ended up being familiar with games in general by virtue of being in game-related spaces (pixel art, CS, animation, etc), but never pushed myself to explore and decode the relationship I had with them. This class was the best opportunity for me to do that.
Part of the reason I failed to complete my game when I was younger was because—as someone who didn’t play games myself—I saw a disconnect between the narrative-heavy nature of my game and the games I was surrounded by (Call of Duty, Minecraft, Halo etc). Coincidentally, this was in 2014/2015, so around Gamergate.
The first concept that stuck out to me in class was the consideration of social games as games. Exploring social games from an academic perspective taught me both about myself and the games themselves.
What makes these games fun? What makes these games fun for me? How can I bring that into the video game world?
The definition as “fun” in games as “learning” from an early reading stuck out to me, as well. I liked codenames because I was constantly learning the new ways in which my friends thought. My team for P1 applied this concept to the crux of Select—you can learn a lot about people by what’s in their camera roll and how they interpret certain prompts.
Learning the types of narrative helped me formalize how I thought about story in games—If I want to tell a story (and I definitely do), how do I do that?
Forcing me to actually play games in critical plays helped a lot, too. I’m a critical person in general, but critical plays forced me to examine what specifically I didn’t like.
For the last critical play, I played What Remains of Edith Finch and it stuck out me. (I sent a 25 minute voice message about it to a friend.) I already said this is my critical play, but it’s exactly the kind of game I’d want to make. It speaks to the type of game I tried to make in 7th grade, and playing What Remains of Edith Finch gave me the confidence to try creating that game again. I would have never taken the initiative to play if it wasn’t assigned for this class in the form of a critical play.
Moving forward, I’m actually going to work the game I attempted to make back in 7th grade. Learning what I did in P2 (pixel art, unity, etc) has made this seem very possible for me. Learning how to develop different types of puzzles helped me figure out what type of mechanics I’d like in the game. I actually made a prototype for one of my team’s core puzzles in P2 that we never ended up implementing, so I will steal that and use it!
Thanks Christina and (the hilarious) teaching staff for a wonderful quarter!
