Final Class Reflection

Before CS 247G, I thought about games the way most players do: as a way to relieve stress, compete with friends, or just pass the time. Games have been part of my life for as long as I can remember, but one moment cemented how much they meant to me. When I was hospitalized in middle school, my parents bought me a Nintendo Switch, and I played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild every single day until I was discharged. That game didn’t just keep me entertained but gave me a world to explore when my own world had shrunk to the size of a hospital room. Games became more than fun; they were my comfort and my escape during a time of distress.

 I never really thought about why games worked the way they did and I came into 247G with a blank slate on the design side, more interested in just playing games than understanding what made them tick. In all honesty, I read the course description and was more hooked by the fact I was getting to play games for school than the fact that the class was called “Design” for Play. But this changed super fast, as the class concepts that stuck with me most were the frameworks for understanding what makes games fun, how emotional storytelling operates through mechanics and not just cutscenes, and how embedded narratives shape player experience in ways you feel before you consciously notice. Learning about soundtracks and how audio design drives emotion was a highlight I never expected. Even the in-class activities left an impression as we got to design our own monsters and battle with them like Pokémon, pitch new game concepts on the spot, or work through problems that had no single right answer.

I experienced real challenges, though, as I wouldn’t call myself the most creative person in the world. I’m an analytical thinker, a CS/Math major, and I often found myself gravitating toward the methodological and structural sides of design rather than the artistic ones. Sketchnotes were super tough for me, and finding creative ways to organize and present my thinking pushed me outside my comfort zone consistently. In P1 and P2, I had to actively resist the urge to optimize systems before I had even figured out what feeling I wanted the player to have.

However, these challenges also allowed me to grow significantly as I learned to appreciate different types of thinking and to recognize that accessibility and inclusivity aren’t afterthoughts in design. They’re foundational. A guest speaker came to talk about Pokémon sprite and character design, and one point stuck with me: even if a player is colorblind, a well-designed character should still evoke the right emotions and communicate its backstory through form, posture, and silhouette alone.  I also grew to think more critically about the games I play. Who is this designed for? Is the company taking advantage of players through monetization or psychological pressure? Whose experience is centered, and whose is invisible? These are all questions I now carry with me, not only in designing but also as I play new game releases.

If I keep working on my own games, I’ll hold onto the artistic and emotional dimensions this class taught me to value: soundtrack, character design, the feeling a player walks away with, as these aren’t secondary to game mechanics to me anymore. I now see all of these aspects as integral to a game’s mechanics.

CS247G was genuinely one of the most fun classes I’ve taken at Stanford. The teaching team was unlike any I’ve experienced. They didn’t just facilitate the class but they participated in discussions alongside us, brought their own perspectives, and made the whole thing feel collaborative rather than hierarchical. I met creative, smart people from backgrounds nothing like mine, and every week I left class seeing games a little differently than before.

I came in knowing I loved games, and now I’m leaving understanding exactly why younger me was so glued to the screen of whatever console I could get my hands on.