This was a really fun class for me this quarter and I learned way more than I thought. Initially I took the class because my friend was taking it and I was going to take it so I could be in a group project class with the people I like and to build something fun I want to build with them, but the class was very enlightening in learning the differen genres or mechanics of gaming. I really appreciate the homework every single week being to play a game and critical play is very hard to write but now I am better at playing games through a more critical lens as a player and I am also able to appreciate all the hard work iterations and coding game developers put into creating a game and now whenever I play a game just looking at the interface and ui and every single new mechanic that gets introduced into the game is done by a lot of coding and a lot of effort by a developer and I just now have so much newfound appreciation for them. I haven’t really been a gamer. Before this class most of my gaming exposure is the more casual mobile games or puzzle games and the interesting switch party games that friends bring to large social gatherings which I wouldn’t really play but would mostly just watch while others played. But now after this class I have a newfound appreciation for board games and social games, when I took my club to a retreat, I was so excited about board games that I brought the game I designed for this class and we played until very late into the night so it was a very fulfilling experience that a project I built for class was actually effective in social bonding instead of most other classes where the project is something I would complete and forget about for a really long time. For P2 especially, I started off as someone with 0 unity experience and we were able to make a 3d game with a complete storyline that I feel very proud of. I will definitely be making my friend play my game after the project deadline just for fun. I am part of Stanford escape room and I think there are a lot of theories in mechanics and how to make things fun or engaging that I learned in class that I will be able to apply in my puzzle and room design for next years escape room so hopefully we will have a much more interesting and engaging room! I think overall I also learned that there is so many different possibilities for games and that games can take on so many different forms, there were genres that I have never exposed myself to that I played for homework which I probably spent way more hours than I should’ve on and I am keeping all the game recommendations for this class as a checklist and my goal this summer is to keep up trying a new game every week! I want to extend a huge thank you to the entire teaching team for this fun experience.
