Before this class, I thought about game design as something incredibly simple and linear. I didn’t know any of the terminology and I certainly didn’t know anything about how “fun” and “play” can be broken down. I had played games and from that side, it felt easy to just sit down with a concept and start to build it out on paper and code. But the lectures and design moments I experienced taught me way more than that, and that there is an art to making games.
The class concepts that stuck with me were the different types of players. It helped me see that there is very much a psychological and sociological viewpoint to studying game design. And soon, designing started from thinking about which type of these player archetypes our game should aim for. I also liked diving in the different types of fun (fellowship, Discovery). I feel like I had never really thought about breaking that down and again, it made designing easier since there was a clearer guide.
We implemented many of these concepts into our games. We wanted competitive fellowship to thrive in our first card game. In Tiger Moms, we wanted people to be able to help each other, to trade, but we also wanted the overall goal of “beating everyone else and getting the most resources” to pressure everyone to be more competitive. With a mechanic focused on negotiating paired with a mechanic of scarcity, we could form a unique play experience.
In On Edge, we very much wanted to focus on gauging player empathy and suspense to help immerse them into the dark story. With this in mind, creating the lore and figuring out how to weave puzzle and narrative together was a challenge. We wanted a way to make players empathize with morally gray characters by inserting heavy interrelational details and clear consequences.
Working in different teams was also a challenge that I felt I have overcome. I think game design is a realm that welcomes a lot of creativity and spontaneity. With so many ideas circulating, it’s easy for people to have conflicts and look for ways to mediate that to create a final product. With a lot of communication and respect, I felt that I helped mediate and cooperate better with teams.
From now on, I want to keep making games, even silly ones that last a minute. I would also want to flush out any of the games that I made this course and continue to improve them.
