Final Class Reflection

Before this class, I thought…

My expectations about game design were largely met by reality. I wasn’t sure if this class would focus more on board games or working towards building a video game through coding, but it turned out to be a bit of a balance of those because my group decided to do that for P2. I wasn’t sure about all the steps that go into making a game because I had never really done that before besides creating makeshift sports games as a kid with my friends. Learning these steps ended up being fun and I learned a lot along the way. 

I did these things and experienced these learnings…

As someone who loves playing games, I thought it was exciting to really dive into creating my own games. I also enjoyed creating two completely different styles of games – one was a game similar to Mafia, and the other was an endless runner game. I learned so much about different ways that games grab and keep your attention through the MDA framework, and I enjoyed all the little iterations that we made to our projects along the way. I realized that games take a while to mess with the rules and it’s impossible to create a good game without doing a ton of testing and adjusting over and over. While this process did get a little bit old after a while, it was worth it in the end when we created games that we considered fun. I also learned about the way different users react to different types of games, and ways that you can help players with disabilities still be able to play and have fun playing a game. Lastly, a minor but important thing that we covered was that it’s okay to mod games.  So many games stem from other games, and I realized that it’s okay to do this rather than having to create an entirely new concept no one has thought of. This is hard to do!

I experienced these challenges…

I won’t lie, I had a bit of a rough quarter in terms of my work load. I managed some outside conflicts with my water polo team, a part time job creating an app, and countless hours of studying for my investment banking exams on top of my classes for the quarter. At times, it may have seemed like I didn’t care because I didn’t come to some classes, but that wasn’t the case. I should have told you (Amy) earlier, but I thought I should tell you here that I enjoyed this class and did the best that I could with balancing! I definitely deserved the comments that my teammates in P1 gave me regarding my work, but I hope this helps explain that. It wasn’t a lack of interest or effort. In terms of challenges within the class, I definitely found it challenging to develop games considering I hadn’t done it before. I had to learn how to work with new interfaces to create the P2 game, and it was challenging to develop narratives and ways of keeping players engaged for both projects. That was all part of the learning process, though. 

I grew in this way…

I grew so much this quarter within this class, as a student in other classes/studies, and as a person. Facing challenges like I described are the best way to learn. I became a better game designer and am confident that I could continue with creating games in the future. If I were to continue on with game design, I would want to explore different interfaces, like Unity, for creating games and see what I could create on those. It sounds like a lot of fun and hopefully one day I will do that. This class was great, and I’m glad I was able to take it!