Before this class, I loved playing games, but I wouldn’t have really been able to articulate why. I often stayed up way too late with friends playing games like poker, One Night Werewolf, or Catan, but I didn’t know how to break it down or design it.
Even though I did not plan to pursue game design professionally, I enrolled in 247G because I was curious about how play could be infused into other kinds of design. This class taught me not just how to make games, but how to think playfully, how to design for joy, narrative, and connection. It gave me the ability to describe games in terms of their mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics.
Throughout the quarter, I had the chance to build two games with great teams. For the first project, we created Lie to Me, a social deduction game about storytelling, lying, and reading your friends. Our second game, The Stanford Files, was a murder mystery set on our own campus, inspired by the real-life death of Jane Stanford. It blended puzzles and Stanford/historical lore into a collaborative experience that we are all very proud of. Watching people roleplay as detectives reading the depositions and get genuinely excited as they piece together all the clues and figure out who the true culprit is is a feeling I won’t forget.
I didn’t expect how much this class would affect how I see all design, not just games. Even though I don’t plan to work in the game industry, I do feel like I have learned many lessons I can apply as I graduate and work in industry. Challenge/rewards systems, iterating through playtests, and trying to create an immersive experience for our audience, are all HCI concepts that can be applied to many kinds of products.
I especially loved our discussions in section with Amy, who was such a thoughtful, fun, and insightful TA. One of my favorite moments all quarter was when Amy baked us banana bread (with chocolate chips and caramel sauce) and it was genuinely the best banana bread I’ve ever had. This is my second class with Christina (I also took 247B), and her honesty, stories, and values will genuinely stick with me even after I graduate Stanford. She reminded us that designing games requires a lot of thoughtful decisions, and that joy is worth designing for.
The best part of this class was definitely my team. I really bonded with them, and making something we are proud of together was a great experience. I learned how to listen to (and suggest) weird ideas, iterate on them, and get feedback from other teams. Making the games was such a fun experience, and from watching out playtests, I think playing them was too.
In general, whenever I work on a product in the future, I will always be thinking about how I can infuse elements of play or game design into it. Thank you so much Christina and Amy! This was one of the most fun and impactful classes I’ve taken at Stanford, and that’s all thanks to you guys:)
