Before CS247G, the games I played most were Solitaire, Hearts, Sudoku variants, and the Rasputin level of Just Dance on Wii–I didn’t consider myself a “gamer,” because I didn’t play the games that seemed to count–RPGs, shooters, racing. I lived with people who played loud story-driven games like The Witcher. I concluded that since I’m quiet, methodical, math-y, and happiest puzzling, “games” weren’t really for me, and I assumed game design was mostly character and story work.
What actually got me was the analytical side. Game balance was a revelation: the good-vs.-bad-game gap is partly tunable, something you can reason about. George Fan’s Plants vs. Zombies talk stuck hard too. It led to countless Starry Night changes: moving tutorials to better times in the level, hiding hints, giving players options to turn down help, etc. I’ve been seeing these concepts in my non-game life for weeks now: wisdom in giving people information when it’s most salient, staying succinct, and not crying wolf.
This class also handed me two things I now love. The first is Journey, which broke me a little–I was raw when it ended, I couldn’t stop thinking about the visuals, and it’s now my constant recommendation. The second is sketchnotes and mindmaps. Sketchnotes are simply rewarding–making a thorough outline, judging the best way to “shape” information, and then spending so much care making it artistically interesting. But learning that mindmaps were an existing formal practice was most mind-blowing… because despite never hearing of them, it’s exactly how my brain already worked. Whenever I’m overwhelmed by or learning something new, I constantly draw these involved maps, so it’s a strange gift to learn that the mental yoga you’ve done for years has a name, and to watch Christina/Butch use it in their real work. (I also use Christina’s star-people/meeple-people drawing tricks daily now…)
There were challenges too. I struggled with iterating and balancing Hexster with the team–the number of carrot tiles, the rules for loopholes, the best win conditions… Most of all it taught me balance isn’t something you can reason your way into from your desk. You have to playtest early and often, because you’ll never guess the strange loopholes living inside a game this rule-heavy.
What I grew into was a much more specific sense of what I like. Games are far more diverse than I gave them credit for. I learned I struggle buying into narrative games and stepping into the magic circle–the storytelling-games day was hilariously rough for my whole table. But balancing Hexster was so rewarding, and I found out I love puzzle games. And I still have standout exceptions like Journey. Knowing that about myself feels more useful than pretending to like everything.
I’m an engineer by education (MechE) and an artist by trade/training (ballet), and games feel like this newfound space that invites both ways of thinking. I want to keep exploring it, whether that’s extending Hexster or finding ways to learn and work more in the field.
