This course has massively expanded my breadth as a designer. Coming in, I had made a few games, and picked up quite a bit from a game design mentor, but within a very narrow band of expertise. I was largely ignorant of the rich academic literature about games. Even worse, most games I’d created were roleplaying or board games, and I had only explored a tiny fraction of the world of digital games.
Most of what I played, before this class, fit within the narrow band of fast-paced strategy games. I realize now that this was enormously limiting to me as a designer, both in the kinds of stories I could tell and the kinds of audiences I could reach. With the possible exception of tabletop roleplaying games, the games I was making and playing hewed much closer to the patriarchal notion of “real” games than the true diversity of the art form.
As such, the most valuable part of this class for me was the readings and critical plays. Combined with my participation in Read Write Play, I broadened my experience significantly. I played mystery games, visual novels, walking simulators, puzzle games, get-to-know-you-games, autochess, and so much more. The critical play assignments did an amazing job of getting me to think about them as a designer- to realize just how fundamental animations and aesthetics can be to an experience, to get practiced at deconstructing a game to extract the overlapping loops and arcs that make it tick. Even better, I learned how prominent game designers and scholars do the same and got to look for their ideas in the games I played.
My favorite reading was the talk on game design patterns for building friendships—I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about how friendships form and why it is on the decline in America—and seeing how those insights about community formation could be applied to a game, where a designer can set up the perfect conditions, was a huge aha moment for me. While I may need to brush up on my networking skills first, I now feel called to create a game all about the process of community formation that utilizes these insights.
What I’ve learned from this class won’t just form goals for the future, though. I’m also going to start building new kinds of games right away. My girlfriend and I, (Zinna, she’s also in this class), have committed to a three-week game-building marathon at the start of this summer. We want to build a game called “With the Winds.” Inspired by The Odessy, A Wizard of Earthsea, and Moana, we envision a fusion of a navigation puzzle with a visual novel as the protagonist sails from island to island, attempting to right a past wrong as they slowly uncover the true history of their home. It’s a delightfully long way from anything I’ve worked on before.
Of course, this class wasn’t without its challenges. First off, my initial design for P2’s puzzles was seriously flawed—I built it in isolation, with no regard for how it would integrate into the story. Harmonizing the different components of a game together is incredibly important, and can lead to incredible results when done well (as Hades, which I played for Read Write Play, demonstrated masterfully). I now have a ton of ideas for how to marry With the Wind’s visual novel and navigation elements together and am chomping at the bit to playtest them.
In addition, I struggled to work with a team that had a massively different social style than my own and made mistakes trying to navigate those differences. Whereas I tend to be very direct in my communication and prefer when team members take the lead over different parts of the project, my group was much more indirect, soft-spoken, and consensus-oriented. I tried to take ownership of one part of the project (the puzzles) and to empower others to do the same. When I noticed that people were quiet and not talking as much, I tried to ask them questions to invite them into the conversation. Unfortunately, this backfired. It made my team members feel put on the spot and unable to disagree with me. I needed to make an apology about halfway through the project, which I did.
Working with my team members and TAs, I developed a new set of tools for working with groups that operate differently than me in the future. Among them: using 1 on 1 meetings to get people’s thoughts rather than large group discussions, using sticky notes and independent writing time to give everyone time to think and share, and finding ways to ask people to delegate to me rather than taking command of a section of the project. While I know I still have a lot to learn about navigating my own privilege and empowering my teammates, I feel I’ve learned a lot from this experience I’ll be able to carry forward into similar situations in the future.
Overall, I’ve left this class more excited about the future of my game design work than ever. It’s like I climbed up a mountain, reached a viewpoint, and a whole landscape of possibilities is spread out before me. I have so much left to learn, and I can’t wait to get started.
