I learned so much in 247G! I think I will leave Stanford with it as one of my favorite classes, if not the favorite. I knew I would love the class coming in — I’d heard great things about it from my friends, and I’ve always loved games, but I wasn’t expecting for it to change how I thought about games — playing them, and designing them. I had always thought of games as a pasttime — at best, beautiful but temporal, and at worst, meaningless and trite. Making a career or a serious hobby out of game design didn’t seem like a good use of my time (or really, anyone’s), and I don’t think I considered games a form of art. Now I do!
During the very first class, it really moved me when Christina talked about her own daughter, who played a lot of games when going through mental health challenges. I thought about what games had meant to me, in my life, and it’s probably no exaggeration to say that games, broadly, have saved my life: playing card games and mahjong with my family, Mario Kart and Overcooked with my friends, and Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley during the pandemic are some of the most tender memories I have. Many of the characters I’ve met in games are as real to me as anyone else, like Sans and Papyrus from Undertale, or Link, or all of the residents of the Valley. I’ve mostly considered myself a fiction writer, but I love how games are one of the few mediums of art that aren’t consumed passively. Playing a game is an active act, and it gives the player so much agency and the ability to express their own creativity. Discovering the world of a game is a special, almost sacred thing — I’ll never forget looking at Hyrule for the first time, flying over the forests.
Through critical plays, I had the chance to play all kinds of games that I’d been wanting to try out, like Journey, Monument Valley, and Gone Home. It was a great opportunity to feel productive while doing something enjoyable. The prompts of the critical plays sometimes felt a little constraining, and writing the essays felt tedious, but it was interesting to play a game trying to answer a design question.
Working with randomly assigned teams was really challenging. I’ve never had to work on a serious creative project with a randomly assigned team before. There were a few times where I felt a little frustrated with my teammates, like when we had creative differences and had to compromise, or I felt like the work was unevenly distributed. But it was mostly wonderful, and my teammate and friend, Angela (who I worked on both P1 and P2 with) and I plan to keep working on our P2 game over the summer! I’m really excited to keep developing it, and I’m already so proud of what our team created :).
Thank you everyone on the teaching team for making 247G such a wonderful experience!
