Final Reflection – Sue

Before this class, I thought of game design mostly in binaries: systems vs. story, mechanics vs. emotion, player vs. designer. I came in with a bias toward narrative—I liked control, precision, and ideas that “meant something.” Games were interesting, yes, but I saw them as vehicles for expression more than experience. I didn’t fully understand how much meaning could come from friction—from what the player isn’t allowed to do.

Then 247G made me rethink everything.

The biggest shift was learning how to design for emotional verbs. “Play” isn’t just what players do—it’s what they feel while doing. I started noticing the gap between what I thought I was designing and what the player actually perceives—a gap filled with pacing, feedback, UI, and trust. When a player hesitates before making a choice, when they look at a character and know something’s off without being told—that’s design doing its job.

I tried to build this into our final project, The Vessel, a narrative mystery set on a half-dead spaceship. Instead of designing “content,” we designed pressure: information that arrives out of order, moral decisions made under incomplete conditions, a dialogue system that withholds resolution.

Some things worked. Some didn’t. The worst bugs weren’t in code—they were in player expectations. They expected more interactivity when we gave them stillness. They wanted answers when we gave them ambiguity. And sometimes that was exactly the point.

A few class concepts stuck especially hard: the Dramatic Arc of Interaction, 8 Kinds of Fun, and our long discussions about ethical friction. I keep returning to this: player agency is a design affordance, not a moral right. When you design a game, you decide not just what happens, but what counts. And sometimes, removing choice is more honest than pretending it’s there.

This quarter, I wrestled with my own habits—overdesigning, under-testing, fearing simplicity. I’ve always loved “clever” systems, but 247G made me ask harder questions. Is it clever, or just complicated? Is this mechanic teaching something, or just showing off? Am I making a game, or hiding behind one?

Next time, I’ll cut faster. Iterate earlier. And instead of asking, “Is this fun?”, I’ll ask, “Does this hurt in the right way?”

I’m not sure I want to make comforting games. I want to make ones that linger. That haunt a little. That tell you something about yourself you didn’t want to know. 247G gave me the language—and the discomfort—to start doing that.