Before this class, gaming played an interesting yet understated role in my personal growth. Games like Poptropica, Dragon Quest IX, and Papa’s Freezeria evoke memories of various phases in my life. I saw games mainly as entertainment and a way to escape. However, 247G changed that. Creating my own games, Burn the Stage and Echoes of the Bay, helped me see games not just as products but as art forms capable of telling profound stories and evoking a wide range of emotions.
This class at Stanford has been the most liberating in terms of exploring my creativity. From designing the branding of Burn the Stage and Echoes of the Bay to experimenting with posters in conjunction with my critical plays, I never really heard a “no”, a stark contrast to the more traditional classes I’ve taken.
Some key concepts from this class that stuck with me include viewing games as opportunities to immerse people in other worlds. Working on Burn the Stage and Echoes of the Bay were two of the few times that I truly loved creating something in an academic context, and it was amazing to be able to curate environments, narratives, ideas, and details that allowed me to introduce people to aspects of who I am as a person and parts of the things that I love. However, one of the most significant challenges I faced was managing scope. My initial ideas were often grand and ambitious, but I had to learn to scale them down to what was feasible within the constraints of the class.
Overall, I have grown tremendously and gained a deeper understanding of game design and its potential as an art form. I was also able to experiment with new toolsets and learned to lean into my creativity while viewing challenges as opportunities for growth.
In the future, I plan to continue working on my games, building on the foundations I have established in this class. I am excited to explore new ideas and to continue pushing the boundaries of what games and my creativity can achieve in the projects I pursue. Overall, I cannot thank you all enough for all the effort and energy you put into this class, and I can’t wait to explore more in the future.
