I’m a high school student from Connecticut, and these days I probably spend more time playing basketball than video games. Before 247G, a game was simply something I played. If it was fun, I kept playing. If it wasn’t, I closed it. I never really wondered why.
But when I was younger, games meant much more to me. In elementary and middle school, I wanted to play almost every day. My parents hated how much time I spent on them, so they often took away my phone. When I couldn’t play, I would open my sketchbook and draw the characters instead. I drew so many that I am still weirdly good at drawing Squidward and Peashooters.
Years later, when I received an invitation to Stanford Summer Session, I found Design for Play in a huge list of courses. I also chose CS and finance classes so it looked like I was actually “studying,” because Design for Play honestly did not sound very academic. But it was the class I wanted most. Somewhere inside me, I still wanted to do what that kid with the sketchbook never could: make a game of my own.
Our first project was Mooney Ranch. Designing and playtesting it changed the way I play games. Now I notice why a mechanic makes me continue, why music changes how I feel, and how a game teaches me something without saying it directly. Concepts like MDA, kinds of fun, onboarding, iteration, and especially playtesting became more than things from class. I started seeing them everywhere. Sometimes I actually miss being able to just play a game without my “designer mode” turning on.
Then we made The Train. I had almost zero experience developing a digital game. When the group form asked about my skills, I didn’t know what to write, so I put down that I got 5s on AP CSA and AP CSP. It sounded impressive. It did not mean I knew how to make a game.
Our original plan was simple: everyone would build one section, and we would combine them later. Then we discovered that everyone had used different keybinds. Each part worked alone; together, our game basically forgot how to walk. I remember looking at it and thinking, we are so cooked.
But we figured it out. I used After Effects to make animations, experimented with vibe coding and GPT, and learned to communicate more with my teammates instead of treating our parts as separate projects. I learned that making games is not just about having ideas. It is about testing them, breaking them, listening to other people, and sometimes letting go of something you spent hours making.
A very serious team meeting. We told George we were already having a project meeting without him. but, we were just sitting outside the classroom waiting for the door to open.
One playtest changed how I understood this completely. Players could solve one of our puzzles, but they didn’t understand why they were solving it. I had spent so much time thinking about what I wanted players to see that I forgot to ask what they were actually seeing. A puzzle that can be solved is not necessarily one a player wants to solve.
If I make another game, I will playtest earlier, communicate better, and be less afraid of changing my favorite ideas. I want to stop designing for the player I imagine in my head and pay more attention to the person actually sitting in front of my game.
Eight weeks ago, I came to 247G wanting to make a game. I made two. But that is not what I think I will remember most.
When I was little and my phone was taken away, I would sit with my sketchbook and draw characters from worlds other people had created. It was the closest I could get to those worlds.
Years later, I ended up in a classroom thousands of miles from home. And for the first time, I wasn’t drawing someone else’s world anymore.
I was learning how to make my own.
Maybe I took 247G for the person I am now.
But I think I finished it for the kid with the sketchbook.
I LOVE THIS CLASS and I WILL MISS THIS GREAT SUMMER
