While I’ve played games for a long time, I came into this class not too interested in building them myself. Sure, I found playing games a fun, meaningful pastime, and games hold an important role in my life—I play with my family, and all of my closest friends were either created or sustained through group play… but I considered game design a long, menial task too daunting to want to explore. However, as a Computer Science major, I thought it would be a great opportunity to explore the realm of play, play some new games, and see if I might change my mind—and I just might’ve.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still slightly intimidated by the process of complete game design, but I by no means perceive it as overly daunting anymore; in fact, I even found it fulfilling. For the first part of the class, I learned how diving in and quickly implementing prototypes was a great way to overcome anxiety at creating a shitty product—and that shitty products are often enough to gauge improvements with reduced effort. The satisfaction from going to a shitty product to a polished one. and seeing other people enjoy something I made, might be enough to bridge the gap to further explore game designer (at least recreationally).
Most of my learning came from firsthand experience: from the readings, I got familiar with concepts, but it was the critical plays and my own game development where I witnessed their applications firsthand. My favorite part of the class were the critical plays. I loved being able to take deep dive into a game regarding a certain concept, and loved being exposed to new games. After seeing other games’ implementations, I was able to implement them into my own work or know what to avoid (I’m looking at you, Letter lying on a rock from Myst which I missed for an hour). I realized the importance of the logical steps made in each game—babying avoidance in onboarding, creating cohesive gameplay loops and narrative arcs/disguise them to seem dissimilar, choosing primary and secondary architecture—they all seem so separate, but have distinct impacts on the player. I eventually found myself criticizing or marveling at games I played beyond class, noting course concepts subconsciously (and find myself humored while doing so).
Of course, I faced struggles along the way. Picking up Unity was difficult for a long time, but after hours of long nights and numerous custom scripts, I can safely say that feel more comfortable starting a Unity project from scratch in the future. I’ve grown from being solely a player, to someone who sincerely believes that with enough time, they can build a game from start to finish. I’ve also become more of design choice critic (thanks critical plays), as well as a slightly better artist via Sketchnotes… but not by much.
I won’t continue working on the games from this class without my groups, but I certainly see myself dabbling with game creation over summer, at the very least. In the future, with more than 6 weeks at a time to create an individual product, I know I’m capable of creating something that other people will love as much as I do; while I still love playing games, I just might be inclined to design more in the future as well.
