Final Class Reflection – Jack Morris

Before this class, games were just what I played, not what I made or studied. They were mindless and fun, and as much as I appreciated them, I didn’t understand the time and effort it takes to make them. I even have two games on the Apple App Store, but they are incredibly bare and easy, and were made more from boredom than from excitement and passion. Now though, being a game developer is genuinely a career that I would love to pursue. Over the quarter I learned much about MDA and how it applies to the games that I hold dearly. What just seemed like button mashing in the past is now precisely chosen mechanics. My favorite game of all time is the Witcher 3, and now looking at how the fighting system works, plus the added GWENT game, plus the RPG branches, there are seriously SO many mechanics in that game and it’s part of the reason the world feels so alive, because the developers thought of every action and system that would exist in a real world and implemented them. Having learned about the “Magic Circle”, I know understand what encompasses a game and how to stretch the boundaries of that. I also found zero-sum and non-zero-sum extremely interesting as it opened my eyes to how games almost ALWAYS have winners and losers (besides like infinite scroller games). In fact it was this very concept that pushed me to do multiplayer games for both P1 and P2 and I am super competitive and wanted to see how I could incorporate the zero-sum outcomes as much as possible – that’s why with my team’s P2 game, we have both minigames which the player can compete in and an overarching game that has an ultimate winner and losers.
Another thing that stuck with me was what games are. They are fun, they can have stories, but they aren’t stories themselves. There needs to be player involvement, and that involvement needs to feel important, or else the game is just a book, and those aren’t nearly as fun as games (maybe that’s a person opinion right there). So I have learned to look for the fun in games, and really be mindful and appreciative while I play them. Before I could get burnt out of games after a bit, but now when I take a moment to understand how I am having fun, it makes it much more enjoyable. There was a period during this last week where with the pressure of finishing our game, that games in general did seem a bit robotic and forced, but since finishing ours and not having that weight on our shoulders, I am reminded that I am proud of what we made, and it is a pleasure to play it. So as I continue developing games (not if, but when), I will try to keep that spark, and anytime I feel like the game is going no where or people won’t enjoy it, I’ll just try to remember that there are different types of fun, and as such, different types of games for different types of people. So long as my game achieves one of those types of funs, then that’s a success. Games are fun, that’s why we play them.