I chose this class because I am looking for a specific stream of my major (Computer Science). I am not a big fan of playing games and I only love playing specific types of games. Before the class, I thought that playing games is merely a way to relax and designing games is something only experts could do.
I am not very good at memorizing the course concepts, so every time when I am writing the Critical play part, I need to open all of the notes I have. The course concepts influence me most are the music arrangement and the idea of MDA. I implemented the MDA concept into my work each time I wrote the critical play essay and the summary of the game we design. Also, I started to use MDA way to think beyond the tasks we had: when I watched a variety show about escape rooms and playing games, I used MDA to analysis the design of these games: how did they work, what could be improved if I am the director/designer….
I learned a lot from this course: not only from the classes, but also from cooperation with my teammates and self study when I encountered some problems. Though I am a computer science student, I knew nothing about unity or any kind of the game engines. All I learned before is how to build up a small game (like backgammon game) with Java. As we have to present something in our game, I started to learn how to use unity with videos online. If someone travel the time back to tell me at the beginning of this course that “you could make a video game with your friends and you will be responsible for a large part of coding”, I could definitely say that this is impossible. During the week I worked on the final project, I only slept for 5 hours every day and spent most of my time working on the project. It was a hard time, but I think it worth the time when I got the game we have right now. Though it is not so perfect and may not be up to others’ expectations, I love this game a lot as this is the first time I turn something in my mind into a real, playable digital game.
If there would be a next chance of making a new game, I would like to try something that is totally different. Also, I would like to work on something different, like sound tracking and color designing. I may not be good at these areas, but I believe it must be worth trying as this is something important in DESIGN, rather than merely CODING.
