Before class I had a pretty superficial understanding of games and their underlying structures. Since I was a kid I have loved playing video games and continue to play periodically to this day. Video games do have a special place in my heart as I grew up with my parents playing Age of Empires II. As an international student I’ve used age of empires IV to stay connected with my dad. Here we play on the same team and use the time to have some fun and also get caught up on things in our lives. Moreover I have stayed connected with mates back home in Australia by playing League of Legends. Here I can say we have had some absolutely unforgettable moments being toxic in the /all chat where we have made friends out of nowhere after verbally (or textually) abusing each other. As a result I’ve always viewed video games as a medium to have fun and also stay connected with family and friends.
Nevertheless over the course of this quarter I have been exposed to entirely new different genres of games and also learned about what actually makes all these games fun. I think learning about mechanics, dynamics and how they manifest as aesthetics has been the most influential and significant concept from this class. I believe that this has taught from a macroscopic lens: 1) how to think about games and 2) how to really analyze what makes games fun. For example, now when I play games such as minecraft, I understand that it leans into multiple aesthetics such as discovery. This is because the mechanics of crafting manifests into a dynamic where users are prompted to explore the world and find certain materials in order to progress etc. As aforementioned, I also really appreciated exposure to new genres of games. In particular I enjoyed playing a bunch of different walking simulators such as Babbdi and Yearwalk. I believe this has made me appreciate video games much more as an artform than as a means to socialize with friends. Yearwalk especially stuck with me for a while. The mechanics were extremely novel and the storyline was extremely haunting.
Ultimately I grew as a gamer, game reviewer and designer from this class. Now I appreciate games at a much deeper level. And also as a designer the final project has taught me various lessons about how to operate efficiently as a team. The importance of iteration. And actually how hard it is to create a game that is not only fun but also balanced. For the most part for both projects I was able to create games that were fun at its core. I’ve also discovered my love for creating ‘lore’. Next time I would really like to write a narrative based game.
Thanks so much for making this class an absolute ball!
