I exist in what you might call a “games family.” If you show up at our house during the holidays, you’re likely to be faced with Boggle, Blokus, or a round of Hearts. No one wants to play my dad in Scrabble — he’s too good. He also once pulled an all-nighter to unlock every character and upgrade in Mario Kart Wii for us. We’re not particularly into long campaigns (anything over an hour is a lot for us) or good at anything thumb-twiddly (never had an Xbox), but we do love a game. However, I had no idea coming into this class how much effort, care, and attention went into crafting my favorite games, even easy-to-play board games or playground games. I had invented games before (what kid hasn’t?) but had never worked with a team to make a balanced or professional-looking game product. I had also never taken a design class, never taken a CS class, and just returned to school after four years off.
Throughout the course, three things I did were most transformative for my understanding of games and design.
The first was understanding the deep value of prototypes and playtests. In building our P1 analog game Fish Reproduction, we made many dramatic changes at once between tests, often changing the whole game or adding several rules before trying it out again. We struggled to make pieces that kept up with these changes, often showing up to playtests asking players to imagine a part that represented a new mechanic. Our changes were not particularly well documented, either: I quickly realized that the meticulous documentation required for the course’s assignments had immense value for the design process. Knowing exactly what had shifted between one playtest and the next made it much easier to tell what was working. Additionally, documenting what pieces we were using, how people reacted to them, and keeping track of what we needed to build would have been helpful for understanding what was a failure of explanation, what was a failure of a mechanic, and what was a failure of aesthetics.
On the flip side, in refining that game for P4, we made a beautiful board for the game a bit early. This reduced the flexibility we had to change mechanics or to shift the size of other pieces. Building lower-quality prototypes would have allowed us to test more effectively. Between these two experiences working on Fish Reproduction, I learned that testing often, documenting well, and building fast, scrappable, but tangible prototypes built the best foundation for a game.
The second transformative thing I did was using sketchnotes to deepen my learning.
While I spent far too many hours sketchnoting, occasionally taking my time from other core tasks or other classes that needed my attention, my sketchnotes underwent a significant transformation throughout this course. My first sketchnote (on MDAO) was mostly words in a jumble of colors, with little in the way of effective visualization of concepts. This note is easy to contrast with my more recent sketchnotes, including one on playtesting formally and one on game balance.
First MDAO sketchnote
More recent sketchnotes
I developed a distinctive style as a sketchnote artist, refining what kinds of symbols and approaches allowed me to refer back to my notes most effectively. I gained experience drawing on my school-rented iPad and thought a lot about why I made certain visual approaches to material.
Sketchnoting has become my primary preferred note-taking method in all my classes, though I don’t always have time to do it in a polished way. Learning to sketchnote was an excellent reminder that thinking visually is a skillset that can be honed and developed. I hope to continue practicing this skill as I continue my time in grad school.
Third, I opened my mind in this class to new kinds of games.
Playing different kinds of games in class with many different people transformed the way I viewed the games I played, but also the way I view the gaming “landscape.” I came to understand that many types of games have value, as long as there are players that enjoy them. I also came to understand that while there are many ways to make a game well, there are some universal ways to make a game poorly.
As someone who has mostly played classic board and card games, plus a few popular PC and mobile games casually, I was exposed to a great deal of new gaming content in the class. Seeing people who were passionate about long, deeply strategic games made me more appreciative of the effort and care that went into that gaming world. Reading the “Zinesters” piece and seeing talks from the GDC about video games made me expand my view of video games beyond controller-based first-person-shooters. I’d never played an IF before and went down the rabbit hole of good ones on the internet, which was a great way to spend a weekend. Finally, as a fan of Dimension 20, I’ve always wanted to play a D&D-style game but never had a context in which to do so. Playing narrative-focused games in class, including one about a queen with Khushi and one about a goat party in space DMed by Seamus, was so exciting for me. I sat in class thinking “it’s really happening! I get to roll the dice! I get to collaborate with these other characters!!”
I ended up deciding to gift several games to my family for the holidays this year, as I encountered so many that shifted my view of what games could be, and I wanted to share the fun with people I care about.
Through the whole class, I ended up with these key takeaways:
- Games are learning, and learning is fun. The core loop that is “simulate or experience something, introduce surprising changes, and then update the simulation/model in our mind to adjust for these surprises” is basically all humans ever do, and it’s what our brains are built for. Luckily for us, this process can also be extremely satisfying and entertaining, as long as we are presented with the appropriate level of challenge. In fact, arguably, all entertainment and satisfaction in the world comes from this loop or some version of it.
- An explanation is nearly always the failure of a mechanic. If you need to use extra words to describe something you’re trying to communicate, it is nearly always because it’s challenging for the person you’re sharing with to simulate, sense, or experience what you’re trying to say, which is usually a solvable problem. Games, art, and science are all simulations/”models” just as described in the first bullet, and they are arguably the most effective way for our brains to share in an understanding.
- A good idea is never harmed by being placed in front of others. Generally, ideas are not useful when they are stuck in your head, and while people can be harmed by criticisms and discouragement, ideas are mostly made better when they are thoroughly scrutinized by many brains. If an idea is not understood or supported by the people you show it to, you may need to keep refining that idea and your communication, or drop that idea for a new one. If an idea gets put in front of lots of people and lots of people think it’s fun and good, it’s probably a good idea! Test a lot of things, and don’t let your ideas become you. Good things can be built when you are willing to generate a lot, see what works, and run forward with what’s been proven.
In the future, I hope to make use of these core ideas as a designer of games and tools, but also as a teacher and as a human. I would love to keep making games, especially as a part of lesson plans/my work as an educator. I will aim for these games to use mechanics to communicate, rather than just words, and to include varied versions of the 8 types of fun. I will also keep in mind that learning is a kind of game, and the times where it doesn’t feel like that’s true are the places we should probably work on in the educational system.
In general, this class has been transformative to me and a true delight. Thank you to all of my classmates, to the teaching team, and to the creators of the games we’ve played! I cannot express how much I feel I have grown as a learner, player, designer, and teacher through the class.
I will also return to my family for the holidays with a lot more insight into Boggle, and into every game we play together. And I’m going to make my mom play Pandemic, cause I think she will like it.
