When my brother moved away for college, I didn’t know what to expect. In the previous and only year where both of us were in high school, we had drifted into our own lanes more than ever—both busy navigating school, sports, music, and socializing—and the only genuine time we got to spend with one another was either on the way to chamber orchestra rehearsals, or on the rare night when we both found ourselves at home, and we would spend just as long sitting in front of the accordion doors of our game closet downstairs picking a game (“But you always win that one!” “Do you think dad will catch onto the rules of that one this time?”) as we would playing it with our parents.
My brother was always the board game lover in our household, and we built quite the collection over the years—starting with the typical rite of passage Catan before moving to Forbidden Island, Risk, and more. When he left for college, so did most of our collection, and our nights of complex games were replaced with only the occasional Spinner or Ticket to Ride night with my parents. When I left for college, the presence of games in my life was reduced even further to only the occasional party game: Secret Hitler, Codenames, We’re Not Really Strangers… So when I decided to take CS 377G at the beginning of the year, I didn’t consider myself particularly well-versed in the gaming world. The game nights of my childhood felt like distant echoes, and never having played video games, I felt particularly ill-prepared to step into the role of a developer and rely on my intuition for what might be interesting or fun for a player. However, I got over this quickly: through course lectures and readings (shoutout Rise of the Videogame Zinesters), it became clear that this was not a course looking only for experienced game developers—democratizing game development and giving avenues to express yourself through creative narratives and interesting systems was much more clearly the goal.
What I didn’t expect, though, was how many parallels I found in this course’s content and the environmental justice work I have been doing over the past four years. As an Earth Systems student in my undergrad, I was especially involved in environmental justice communication through both my internships and the Notation in Science Communication program. This has led me to a more recent venture designing a platform to increase collaboration among community based organizations working in the adaptation and resilience spaces. My team and I have been struggling with design for months—making components visually appealing while still clear and uncluttered, adding support features that make the platform accessible for people from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and matching our vision of “helpful” features with actual user utility. Many of the things we learned in 377G reflect advice we have been given in the past on this project: namely, iterate quickly and test often. After the projects in this class, I have found myself bringing more spontaneity and flexibility to my work on this project—”playtesting before I’m ready” has expanded beyond just play!
Creativity has always felt like a slow process for me—my type A personality mixed with a splash of anxiety and perfectionism makes a perfect cocktail for projects never quite making it past ideation. This class has helped show me that most ideas can be good ones if you put enough time and care into them. This was most strongly demonstrated to me by P3. I wasn’t entirely sold on our system for a long time, but watching the final game take shape ended up being one of my favorite parts of the course. This is also the project where our readings about balancing fun and learning (or, in this case, accurately modeling a system) became the most relevant, as this tension was unbalanced for a large portion of the development process—a frustrating feeling on such a short project, but one that turned into deep satisfaction when the puzzle finally started clicking together. On the other hand, this class also gave me the itch to find a Goldilocks middle ground and start a project where I will have more time to breathe, ideate, and come up with a narrative I would truly love to develop in the future!
Over Thanksgiving Break, I drove down to Joshua Tree with my brother—the first road trip we’ve ever taken without our parents. We spent hours on the way down talking about games—what he thought of my P2 game I sent him the week prior, what games he had recently played with his roommate (who he originally introduced to me as the “one who stays up until 4am every Friday hosting board game nights”), and listening to “The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One” D&D podcast. It solidified my consensus that Designing Serious Games is solidly tied (with Wild Writing) as my favorite class I have taken at Stanford. It is incredibly rare to find a class whose material, teaching, and peer environment pushes you so positively to create deliverables that you are deeply proud of and excited to share. That said, Designing Serious Games does it perfectly, fostering a supportive environment while keeping expectations high—continuously reminding us that we can do better and making us want to follow through and do exactly that.
