Before this class, I thought game design was much more about the functionality than the design itself. This is because personally, when playing a game, I usually focus on the mechanics or the “smoothness” of the game rather than the story or overarching narrative. However, after taking 247G, I think I realized just how important narratives and the relationship between mechanics and design is. As a player of a game, many of the behind-the-scenes work and unnoticed details are not really thought about much, but thinking through games as a designer puts a whole new perspective on them. For instance, I thought it was very interesting how “level design” as a concept is so complex. On one hand you have “standard” levels like in Mario games or platformers, while in other games you might have something like experience points (Minecraft) that determine your “level” or progress. One of the class concepts that stuck with me was the lecture on puzzles and how to design good puzzles. As someone who is interested in solving puzzles, I thought that designing them would just be a little more difficult, but when I sat down to try and design one, I felt like I didn’t know where to start. Particularly the quote about how puzzles should be fully disadvantage for the player but they must be expected to win was quite memorable. I had never thought about them that way but in retrospect, I believe that’s how most games are and should be. The designer of a game builds the scene and tries to pit everything against the player, but there is always a way for the player to win.
Some challenges I experience throughout this course had to do with transitioning from a gamer perspective to a designer perspective. Especially with the earlier critical plays, I found it hard to go from speaking about surface-level things I liked and didn’t like to deeper, underlying aspects of each game. As a side effect, I feel as though I will always think about what exactly designers were trying to convey through the mechanics, physical layout, and structure of the game.
One cool thing about this class was seeing the diverse array of games created and thought up. It was super interesting to playtest and see how one prompt of creating a puzzle game could lead to so many different ideas and concepts. From map-based puzzles games like mazes to unique mini games based in art or music, I realized just how much potential there is in using games as a medium for communication. I hope that in the future, I will have another opportunity to design a game and use the concepts I learned in this course to guide me. All in all, I’ve definitely come out as a new designer overall, a player with a new perspective, and someone even more interested in working as a game designer.
