CS377G. CS377G was the first CS class that made me think to myself, “I may have just found my people!” Christina’s radical teaching methods, personality, vulnerability, honesty, the political ideologies that most of the class seemed to share regarding the world, housing, child-rearing, public transit, computer science, climate change, space debris, the fact that individuals I looked up to were studying alongside me, all these aspects of the class made me feel like I belonged in it, that I was a part of a budding community. Coming into the 2024-2025 school year, I knew that my love for systems, low-level programming, games, and art meant that the world of game development held a lot of promise for me.
Before 377G, I seriously reassessed the lack of creation in my life and started to consider how the class could help me reconnect with my artistic practices (my background in music and visual arts) while simultaneously integrating my technical background into the process. Obviously, I had preconceived notions of what constituted a serious game (possibly depressing, possibly mean/unfair, educational “games”), how difficult designing/brainstorming serious games would be (fairly easy), what made making games so difficult (coding, battling bugs), which where all shaken up fairly early into the class. I thought I’d only make two games the entire quarter, that I’d be working digitally the entire time, coding every day, deeply entrenched in some game engine, probably Godot or Unity. These predictions were all wrong too. I didn’t need more than one class to realize that, however, especially after spending 1 hour designing my first game ever on a piece of printer paper on day 1.
377G exposed me to thinking about game design as an open, unsolved problem. It caused me to think about games as an artistic medium, as experiences that can be pushed to their limits and improved iteratively through playtesting. I read radical takes on video games through assigned readings like “Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form” and classmate suggestions like “video game feminization hypnosis”. I worked on 4 games, the first of which was extremely difficult and almost felt like a rite of passage. Multiple redesigns, tense meetings, disagreements, all of which were welcomed but definitely not expected nor easy to navigate.
P1 taught me that even if an idea/design feels fleshed-out up there, in my head, the devil is still in the details. It taught me that even if an idea/design feels fleshed-out up there, I must still proceed with caution, stay critical, and not overly-idealize it because it shows promise/is exciting/is the only idea I have. It taught me that just because you want an idea to work doesn’t mean you should force it to. That I must stay truthful with myself. I think these are principles that translate pretty well to the rest of life, honestly.
P2 reinvigorated my passion for art. Throughout all the projects, coming up with ideas I felt satisfied with took up a substantial amount of time in respect to the total amount of time I worked on each project. The process of creating art for P2 actually helped me arrive at my final idea for it. I learned about IF games, Godot, and how venturing outside of the confines of a visual game engine is something that interests me.
P3 further reinforced this interest and continued to reinvigorate my artistic side. I drew more than 15 characters for the game, and with the time i had left fought a tireless battle with Unity. Systems have always intrigued me and while I didn’t get to explore them the way I wanted to in P3, I nevertheless learned valuable lessons that I will carry with me in the future. If I don’t fully understand my system, I shouldn’t yet be coding.
P4 taught me that I produce better art when I feel more connected to the subject matter. Comparing it to P2, my art for P4 felt less personal. I felt less motivated to tweak and improve it and work on it for extended periods of time.
The most valuable takeaway I received from 377G is a reflection of just how well its learning goals are communicated through the readings, lectures, and projects: to make the games I want to make, almost all of which are serious, I need to read. I simply do not have the cultural/literary/critical background I feel like I need to make the powerful serious games I envision working on in the future. Serious games like Pathologic 2 and Disco Elysium are as amazing and inspiring as they are because their creators didn’t skimp out on their reading. They are able to synthesize multiple different literary works and communicate their essence through play, undoubtedly a feat of immense skill.
In the future, when I make games, I hope to read every day, draw every day, and code using the tools that feel right to me, regardless of what the industry has to say about them. I hope to stay critical, get more detailed, use more pencil and paper, and delay coding as much as I can.
