Final Course Reflection — Jack Ryan

Pre-247G I knew that game design was particularly complex, and that it was more than sprinkling cool mechanics onto a broad idea until it felt fun. I felt like playing Elden Ring, Minecraft, Rainbow Six Siege, and other games had given me instincts about what works, but nothing close to any practical knowledge about how to implement them. One of the coolest examples of great game design that I can think of recognizing before taking this class was the time-jumping level from Titanfall 2. As a player this level was not just so unbelievably cool but also incomprehensibly complicated, I had no idea how such a complicated idea could be executed so seamlessly.
The early lectures in 247G I found to be very enjoyable. I liked hearing about optimizing mechanics, storylines, and atmosphere when creating a game. I began to see games as precisely engineered products instead of happy accidents. These lectures were one of the highlights of my quarter with this class; I felt like I was getting peak behind the curtain of how these incredible games were made and designed. 

I felt that these lectures were able to carry me pretty smoothly into P1. I made a four player strategy game and in my prototyping process was very focused with balance. I made decision trees, spreadsheets, and other models of the ruleset until I found one that was fair and unexploitable for each and every player. By the time I had my final playtest I was quite happy with the ruleset and the reactions of my playtesters. I did really enjoy the process as well as the final result, and being able to utilize the lecture content in my development of the game was very rewarding. 

I think that P2 was a different story for me. My teammates were excellent and we were able to coordinate, whether in-person or over our group text chain, and create collectively very well together. However, the immediate jump for me to creating a game digitally was a far steeper learning curve than I was anticipating. I really enjoyed how ambitious my team was and how much we wanted to implement and go for for our deduction game, and I learned a lot about what I would have done differently in helping manage and distribute what needed to be done across us. I wish that my team had granularized what needed to be done a bit further, such that there were specific action items that we could all collectively “check off” a task or to-do list. The “who does what” question was addressed in our early meetings, but one of the best abilities of a good team is being adaptable to changing needs. I personally feel like I could have done more to keep a physical version of the mental checklist that we all had updated. 

I am a little upset, however, that I am somewhat restricted to vibe-coding a lot of the ideas that my team and I decided on because I do not feel proficient enough in Godot to implement these changes in the amount of time that we have allotted to us.

Throughout the quarter, one of the things that stuck out to me the most in my game creation was the importance of iterative prototyping. Making modifications and then immediately testing them for feedback was one of the reasons why I felt like my P1 game ended up in it’s final state. Setting design pillars is also a concept that I will continue to remember, defining clear goals or concepts early for what I would like my game to accomplish, such as strategic equality for my P1 game, made the decision making process further down the line far simpler and more streamlined.