Before I took this class, I though of game design as purely from a gameplay/story standpoint. Whenever I made a game in a previous class, I thought “what would be fun for me, and what kind of story would I like?” When playing games, my viewpoint was nearly just as shallow, not really engaging in what the game was designed to be past a surface level. However, during my time taking this class, I helped make two games, with both intended to have completely different impacts. I learned about how game designers choose their target audiences, and all the theory that goes into designing the game to fit the target audience. The knowledge that I gained from my classes went into designing my games, as instead of thinking of what I would like in a game, I thought about the traits of the ideal player of the game, and tried to design my elements around what people with those traits might want. I faced some challenges in doing this, as I am generally not someone who plays the types of games that I had to design, and thus struggled to think about what people who would like those games would like. Another challenge I faced in this class was not knowing what games to play for my Critical Plays, which I then used to solve my other challenges. I played games of genres that I don’t normally play, such as puzzle games, to try and see what I liked about them. I looked at discussion about puzzle games online to get a feel for what the communities of those games liked in terms of difficulty, design, and story. I went out of my way to ty and experience new things so I could make better games in class, and I feel like it ended up paying off. The puzzles that I had a hand in for my P2 game are puzzles that I’m satisfied with, and I have a newfound appreciation for puzzle games, even though it’s generally not a genre I would play often. Facing these challenges helped me grow by forcing me to step out of my comfort zone and design mechanics around players that I weren’t familiar with, as well as play games I generally didn’t really want to play beforehand. These skills are ones that I will end up keeping with me for a long time, helping me as an overall game designer and with playing games that I normally wouldn’t have the motivation to play, because they might be great experiences. In the future, I’ll keep audiences that I may not belong to in mind, and thus be able to design games that more people will end up liking, which makes me happy.
