Before this class, I had always experienced games from a player’s perspective, focused more on the forward-facing parts of the game. With what I learned in this class, I now consider the developers’ meaning and intent behind each mechanic, level, and story moment. While I joined this class looking to learn about creating games themselves, I very much enjoyed and appreciated how this course dove deep into the human interaction and information design aspects of game design.
The most memorable video we covered in class was George Fan’s PvZ onboarding lecture. Its explanation of the blending of tutorials and game information into the gameplay itself made me look back and reflect on all of the various game tutorials I have ever played. I believe that this lecture, and the in-class discussions related to the consideration of how players perceive and interact with information in games, will greatly help me with any future game design I may do. Generally, this class helped define and explain a lot of game design concepts that I had experienced before but did not know the names of or reasons for their implementation. Concepts such as the magic circle, game narrative modes, and loops/arcs come to mind. Knowing these now, I can meaningfully utilize all of these concepts in future projects.
Another aspect of this class that I did not expect to enjoy as much as I did was sketchnotes and mindmaps. I have always struggled with taking meaningful notes, often just copying what my professors write down. I rarely look back at these notes, opting to use other materials when studying. Sketchnotes and mindmaps, however, showed me how fun and easy taking notes can actually be. Sketchnotes not only simplify the note-taking process by reducing it to drawings, but also make notes much easier to read without much information and detail being necessarily lost. Mindmaps also simplify note-taking and help a lot with seeing the relationship between ideas. Overall, this class helped me develop my note-taking skills, which was unexpected from a game design class but very welcome.
Finally, this class taught me the importance of playtesting and player feedback. In both projects, my teams ended up doing a lot of gameplay and mechanic iteration. This was helped massively by playtesting, which allowed for quick testing and results for the given iteration. While I was previously aware that playtesting was a crucial part of game design, it never occurred to me that it could help catch issues beyond just the basic rules of a game. Aspects of the game such as feel and aesthetics are almost as important, if not more so, than gameplay itself, and playtesting was a great way to gauge players’ reactions to these aspects.
Overall, I plan to review and use the various design aspects and concepts I learned in this class in my future games and projects. Working on games, I want to empower players and give them the freedom to explore the game in their own way through user experience and information design.
