Reflection Seb

I’m very glad I took this class. It is the first time I’ve enrolled in a class outside of the School of Humanities (can you believe that?), and especially my first CS course. I think the methods of design thinking that I learned will travel with me for a very long time, in whatever practice I’m taking part in. I will literally never play video games the same way again, and I think that’s a great thing. I approach Stanford with an eye for “play” as a whole, and starting the class with that philosophical element outlined was extremely exciting.

People often ask me the reason I’m at Stanford—a place that so relentlessly pursues technical knowledge, intense research, and a devotion to understanding the world—as someone who is a “creator-type.” I have had many answers, but the bottom line has always been: I could be doing whatever I want in the world as a creative, so, now that I’ve been given the opportunity to treat this place as a playground, I might as well take advantage of it.

247G definitely gave that instinct a framework and a set of tools I’ll carry well beyond graduation. Learning about concepts like play-testing and prototyping will for sure carry over to my theatrical design practice. Input from other humans is so necessary in creativity, and too often I settle for my own ears only (I’m speaking mostly of musical creation, of course). Thinking about games through the lens of the eight kinds of fun is an intriguing formula that I wonder how to apply to theatrical creation. Could there be eight kinds of fun within improv or theater-making?

Doing Critical Play assignments let me dig into these concepts more deeply. How do stories get told in games? Why does addiction matter, and why can it be good—or evil? Our final project really exemplifies everything I took from the class. In Clearing, I took the helm of the narrative structure while also tackling a more technical role in the sound design. I never thought I’d be able to parse a single line of C# code, but now I actually understand what’s going on when I open a script file—and I know how to edit it in a way that’s not just “ChatGPT, please help” (though, of course, I did that too). We created something we’re all very proud of, and I am thrilled with the outcome.

There were certainly challenges as well. I was overwhelmed by all the options we could have added to the game, and culling them down to the essentials was an important lesson: scale appropriately. We made the start of something awesome, and it gave me the feeling that I could try it again, and again, and again. I hope more game design is in my future, and I can’t wait to share it!