Where do I even begin? Designing Serious Games has been, hands down, my favorite class at Stanford. After all, what other class combines modern games — some I grew up playing and others I’m currently playing — with real and useful learning? Lectures, though risking boredom in other classes I’ve taken, were always made fun with the inclusion of some of my favorite games, including Life is Strange and Cult of the Lamb. Every lecture, I was enthralled. However, despite this being the highlight of my Stanford course experience, I admittedly didn’t know what to expect before enrolling in this class. Obviously, I anticipated we would be designing games; but I didn’t anticipate how fun and in-depth the instruction would be about a medium I’ve played my entire life.
Growing up, I routinely played board games with friends and family. Despite this, I’d never actively considered mechanics such as loops and feedback in a formal sense. Sure, playing Magic the Gathering, I’d tried to optimize and chain cards and combinations when fine-tuning my deck, but I had never actually thought of it in a systematic sense. When I thought of mechanics, I typically thought of their use in digital media — after all, that’s the medium I predominantly spent most of my time playing. I simply hadn’t played enough board games, let alone engaged in enough critical conversations about them, to see the diversity in their play, mechanics, messaging, and design.
However, when I play board games after this class, these teachings are at the forefront of my mind. Playing Pandemic last week, I found myself paying much closer attention to how the pieces and tokens were designed — such as how your operator or city cards are structured so none of the important information is ever covered. I’ve also become more aware of elements added to games specifically to engage players and elevate the experience, like in Wyrmspan. Setting the game up, I realized how easy it would have been to make the eggs simple tokens, yet the designers intentionally chose full multicolored eggs to appeal to players’ sense of tactility. Everything is intentional — down to even the monotonous rulebooks. Admittedly, observations like these were rare for me before the class. They were design choices I had long taken for granted.
I realize now that I hadn’t the slightest idea how truly difficult good games are to make — from the rapid iteration to the challenge of balancing mechanics. I have a newfound appreciation for the difficulty behind making a rulesheet, box design, and balanced play. Having had the opportunity to make three separate games and iterate semi-extensively on one of them, I’ve now developed a much deeper understanding of design thinking and the processes hidden behind games. Most saliently, though fundamental and basic, I understand how mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics and outcomes intersect. This is likely one of my largest takeaways from this class. Though easy to learn about, mastering the intersection of these elements is deceptively difficult. When they work well, they’re almost invisible, taken for granted. When they don’t, the entire game collapses into shambles.
Following this course, I am motivated to continue designing games; my passion for game design is at an all time high. Prior the class, I’d never used Twine or known how to make games in it. However, now, I understand the entire workflow, from setting up SugarCube to designing a storysheet and CSS, to creating a mermaid chart to easily navigate proofs of the game. There are a multitude of stories I’d love to tell in the future, and learning a medium like Twine is incredibly convenient as I can create emotional impact without needing to dedicate time to drawing visuals, recording audio, or handling all the other components other mediums require.
Moreover, I appreciate the surplus of time and resources the teaching team gave us to experiment with different mediums and game engines, letting students learn through experience about each medium’s specific strengths and weaknesses. Particularly, playing randomized new games every day in class opened my eyes to a wide range of mechanics, strategies, and design choices. It helped me see what worked well — like Spirit Island — and what didn’t, such as the overly complicated system in Euphoria. Without the opportunity to play these games in class, I likely would have never played them nor learned how specific mechanics can make or break a game.
To better learn these strengths and weaknesses, along with their mechanics and design elements, the read-and-plays were also particularly helpful. First, having time where I was forced to relax and detach from other difficult schoolwork was genuinely good for my mental health. Second, by playing games rather than just watching videos or reading papers about them, I got to actually understand and appreciate how mechanics intersect, fall short, or shine within different genres. This has become a toolset I now carry with me as I continue to play games recreationally.
Finally, guest lectures from professionals within the game-making industry were both helpful and entertaining. Louis Lafair’s presentation — and his returning appearances to playtest our games — helped me to better understand what serious games look like in practice. It showed me the scope of what this can be — not just recreational games, but rather entire toolsets for helping organizations prepare for disasters, mitigate harm, and learn. Going forward, this class has helped me understand how games can be deployed to genuinely make a difference and convey meaningful messages. I hope to continue creating games that evoke emotion, engage players, and teach them something — whether about the world or about themselves.
Lastly, thank you to the teaching team for making this class such an amazing course! I loved every second of it.
