Final Reflection – Claire

Growing up, I absolutely loved video games. Part of this I attribute to my older brother who still games a lot to this day, and part of it I think comes from my love to explore and immerse myself in a new world. 

While for awhile a slipped away from this hobby, I have found that this class has absolutely resparked my interest, both in a designer and a player side of games. I’ve always enjoyed creative pursuits, but I feel like this class really pushed me to share my work and be open for feedback. In fact, playtesting ended up becoming one of my favorite parts of the class, both as a playtester and as a moderator/notetaker. I learned so much from playtesters and got so many ideas that we may not have come up with on our own. 

I really enjoyed learning the theory behind game design and why they are fun. I hadn’t realized how intentionally designed games were, and I feel like any game I play now I can look at with a new and more appreciative perspective. Some concepts that stuck with me the most were the MDA concepts, and how they combine into a game. I spent time refining the mechanics in my game and thinking about what kind of dynamics I wanted. Ultimately, I wanted my games to be fun, and I feel like my groups for both projects succeeded at this. 

There was definitely a bit of a learning curve, especially with digital game design. Building a game from scratch was a lot of work, but absolutely so rewarding. We created original art and our own concept and mixed music and got to make everything just the way we wanted it. It felt so satisfying to combine my technical CS interests with my love for art, design, and creativity. It pushed me to keep working even when I would get stuck on a bug, partly because I enjoyed making the games so much. I definitely want to make more games in the future, and am so glad I have a little bit more of a background now on how to do that. 

For whatever game I make next, I just want to continue making games that I know I would enjoy to play. I would probably spend more time planning, which is just difficult to do with this class due to the time constraints. However, I think I would want the next game to be carefully outlined and designed. I would create as many original assets as possible and just allow it to feel like a creative pursuit.

While I don’t know for sure yet if my career will involve game design, this class helped me realize that I definitely want design and creation to be involved somehow! Thank you so much for an amazing quarter!!! This class was so so amazing!