This class was one of the most fulfilling classes I’ve experienced at stanford. I think that this class has really taught me about principles of design through the medium of games. I’ve found myself grasping design concepts in more depth than I had before, feeling much more confident as a designer in general, as a result of this class
I feel that p1 was the best group experience I had in a long time. I felt that our group really gelled, and we were able to disagree and commit in a way that supported the project’s end goals. We were honest with each other, and while the project was one of the more difficult ones in the class design-wise (I felt like I was always a little bit at a loss for what we should change next about the game), I think I’m perhaps the most proud of our little bug therapy game out of any of the other projects in the class. I think from P1 I really learned what good team work really truly looks like, and making an effort to build good working relationships with people around you can drastically improve y’all’s output.
If P1 taught me about teamwork, P2 taught me about myself. I think out of all of the projects in the class, P2 was the one I had the most fun doing, and the project I got the most lost in. Working on Another Job really did feel like working on myself. I think I overheard Christina say something along the lines of “I think P2 is the closest a lot of people get to making art”. I really felt like I was grazing up against something special with P2. I felt a creative and artistic fulfilment from this project that I really haven’t felt in a long time, perhaps ever. I feel silly typing this out, but I do really feel that P2 fundamentally changed my perspective as a creative and as a designer. I feel that the process of working through P2 showed me what I like about making games and showed me what I like about designing experiences. I came to see how my drive as a game designer is to reach toward the unexpected and to try to innovate and put twists on form and genre. It sounds obvious now, but I really learned that games should be designed how they are experienced – through play. I learned that I love to make games because I love the play that it affords – getting to dance across boundaries and around categories. I love defying categories. I feel so pretentious writing all this about my little Twine game, but I really do feel like it changed my life.
P3 was a very different beast. I think it was sort of the antithesis of P1. We had a great group of people with a really diverse skillset who were all motivated to work hard and make a cool, interesting, fleshed out game. And it really felt like we crashed and burned. I spent a lot of time wondering how the project could have been saved, and I spent a lot if my P3 writeup wondering what went wrong. I think we just bit off more than we could chew. But that doesn’t mean that P3 was worthless. Quite the opposite. I feel that P3 taught me a lot about pivot, coping with changes, thinking on my feet, and moving on from failure. I think, at the end of the day, the little project we made wasn’t what we wanted, but I am proud of what we did! I think, again, our little twine game was trying to do something really interesting. It was less than we were hoping for but I think it was something! I think there’s a seed of something worth keeping there. Again, I see the same drive to twist and play with genre and form. The combination of two drastically different genres of game – cooking and horror – feels very true to my creative spirit. I see how my voice came through in a project that we all had a hand in.
As I’m typing this, it’s past midnight on the night that my P4 is due. The teaching team for this class has been truly so gracious and forgiving with deadlines. I had a really rough bump near the end of the quarter with both world events and personal life events. Part of me wishes I had more time and space to dedicate to my P4 project. But, I’m happy to have gotten the chance to continue my P2 game at all. I brought on a collaborator to help with this phase of the project, and our working relationship was definitely very different than I had with all of my other teammates this quarter. This time I really took on the role of creative director for the project, and tried to get my collaborator to align with my vision of the project. Of course, I wasn’t the Game Czar. We had a lot of discussions where I felt I was following their direction as well. But I do still feel some creative ownership of the project as my own. It was a unique experience for me to be a creative lead on a project. I really feel like I’ve added a new way of working to my creative and professional tool belt.
I think one of the most valuable things this class has taught me is that I can just go make games right now, and I don’t need anyone’s permission. I have gained so much confidence from this class, and perhaps that is what I most needed to be a successful designer.
