Final Class Reflection – Luke McFall

I was 7 years old when I tried to make my first game. The idea of conjuring up vasts worlds of freedom, self-expression, and adventure was incredibly alluring to me. I tried to learn Ruby to use a jank graphics engine that could only draw straight lines to create a Mario-like side scroller. I failed. I was 10 when I first downloaded Unreal Engine to try to make my second first game. It went about as well as you would expect a 10 year old trying to learn Unreal Engine would go. I failed. I was 13 when I tried to make my third first game with Unity. This time I had more coding experience under my belt, I watched hours of tutorials, jumped between hundreds of forums. I failed. I tried countless times to make my first game after first game, all of them failed.

When I was 18, I was sick of failing. I had learned so much technical knowledge about coding, 3D modeling, animating, shader scripting, I had yet making a playable game still felt impossible. But I decided I was going to make it happen. I sat down at my kitchen table and began working on what would become a 3 year project. For 3 years, I worked on the game relentlessly. Building up mechanic after mechanic, modeling mesh after mesh. 3 years of hard work… for nothing. The game looked good, it had a bunch of really interesting mechanics, and was a functioning game. But it was unplayable. I had failed yet again.

Every failure, I was learning and building knowledge, but it was still a chip away at my dream of being a game designer. Until I took this class. I feel like I learned so much in all of those years of failing, but this class showed me how to implement all of those lessons I learned. It taught me the value of engaging with a game on a deeper level. The value of building from the starting line, not toward the finish line.

The most important lesson I learned from this class, was the value of building a game with others. Team 22 has changed my life. Every class, they inspired me, challenged me, and pushed me in ways that I had never experience. I came into P2 a control freak who had an exact vision that I wanted to create. Within in the first week, I realized that in order to be the game designer I always wanted to be, I had to give up control and just flow. For the first time in my life, I feel confident in my dream. I was planning on leaving Stanford to find some SWE job that I probably would have hated. But now I see a future where I’m apart of a studio of incredibly talented people who all share the same vision and dream. I have the confidence I need to make it a reality thanks to this class. Thank you.