Growing up, I was always playing games with my family, and it was something that bonded my siblings and I together since we have a large gap in age. Because of this, from a young age, I was always turning old business cards into makeshift playing cards or drawing game art on shoeboxes. My family and I would always try to think of small mini games to pass the time waiting for food in restaurants or enduring long car rides. While doing this was fun, I don’t think I ever fully appreciated that process as something that could be productive for real life. They were simply ways to make time fly. Now, after taking this class I definitely recognize and appreciate these moments of play in my life more deeply.
I feel that interacting with games on an almost daily basis always gave me something to look forward to and offered great breaks from whatever else I was working on at the time. Something really cool that has come out of this class and writing all these critical plays is the ability to look around and see different objects as possible game components, or look at games I’ve played for years now and think about how I could improve on or mod them to make it more fun. In class, some of my favorite moments were the weird games like A Fake Artist Goes to New York or creating our own monsters to battle. It was so fun to see people who had never created games or drawn very much before come up with the most wacky and creative ideas in such a short amount of time.
While I had always thought about creating games before this class, I never knew the specific things to consider in making a great game. Sometimes I saw some interesting mechanisms in my favorite games and always wondered “how the heck did they think of that?” Now, I realize that so much of the game design process is rapid prototyping and play testing. Not only do you think of new ideas as you iterate, but watching other people play your game can tell you exactly what’s working, what doesn’t, and what could be added to make it even more fun. I had only ever played games with family, so I never realized how satisfying it would be to see other people fully engaged and enjoying a game I helped create. Hearing people yell or get competitive was always exciting since it helped confirm for me that the game was going in the right direction. I originally thought that the long class time was intimidating, but now I realize how convenient it was to have such a great pool of dedicated play testers for our games.
Reflecting on all my experiences in 247G, it feels like a full circle moment. Taking this class has brought back that feeling of wonder and excitement for play that I had as a kid making games out of whatever I had around the house, embracing play as a means to embrace life. I realize now that games aren’t just an enjoyable way to pass the time, but a productive way to process and engage with the world, and it doesn’t get any less important to do so as we leave our childhood!
So, when those brief moments of play present themselves now, I try to let myself enjoy them.
