Before the class, I thought this:
When I first stepped foot into this class, if you were to put me on a scale from 1 to 10 scale for game-design knowledge experience, I’d have landed somewhere very close to 0. I came in with really no experience, but I did come in with a lot of curiosity. Yes, I didn’t know that physical games were called “analog,” that interactive fiction existed as a craft, or that tools like Twine existed and enabled branching narratives. I had no sense for what a systems game truly involved, nor did I really understand or appreciate how intensive and iterative the design process is. I was a fairly passive consumer: games were fun things I played, but not artifacts made with intentionality from layers of mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics. But I did come in wanting to learn more about this field and craft.
As I started my master’s in Learning Design and Technology, I wanted courses that let me get my hands dirty. I’d been thinking about learning through games, especially for children, and I wanted to sign up for the course to learn through doing. Truthfully, I expected that I would leave the course having picked up some practical skills, but I did not expect the depth of mindset shift that would come from repeatedly prototyping, playtesting, and reflecting, and how glad I am to have experienced the intensive yet rewarding process of learning how to design serious games.
In the class, I did these things (that were particularly helpful):
This course systematically pushed me through rapid design cycles and exposed me to a toolkit I did not know I needed. We learned frameworks like MDA (Mechanics–Dynamics–Aesthetics) and MDAO, which helped me separate low-level rules from emergent player behavior and the intended player experience. The Sophia framework, where designers are encouraged to identify players’ fear created by an absence of skill and help scaffold them toward mastery and joy, resonated deeply with my interest in games for learning. It reoriented how I think about presenting challenges in games, and to see them not as obstacles to remove, but as an opportunity to scaffold toward mastery and intrinsic motivation.
Learning how to sketchnote for the first time was also another major pivotal moment and takeaway I had from this course. If I’m being honest, I’m not the most artistically inclined, especially when it comes to the visual arts, and at first, I really struggled to present ideas compactly and visually. But soon with lots of practice, sketching and visual summaries became a useful tool for synthesizing ideas– they helped me map systems, connect mechanics to dynamics, and remember lessons from playtests and readings. Sketchnoting ended up being a design thinking practice for me, where I was able to externalize thoughts, iterate on them, and use visuals to communicate with teammates. I also grew to appreciate my own unique style to sketchnoting, which at first I didn’t really like because of how ‘unprofessional’ I thought it was– but overtime, I really grew to appreciate to like how easy it was for me to interpret and understand my sketchnote and it really gave me a lot more confidence in approaching tasks that are a bit out of my comfort zone.
Across four projects, P1 through P4, I practiced different design modes and pushed myself beyond my comfort zone.
P1 (learning-goal oriented) was my very first real step into game design, and it showed. Our initial idea, “The World’s Worst Design Factory”, sounded fun and hilarious in theory but quickly fell apart when we tried to make it work in practice. But honestly, that messy beginning ended up being the most valuable part. I learned how to design pre- and post-playtest surveys, how to gather useful feedback, and how to iterate without being precious about any one idea. Because the game was meant to teach something, we anchored it in sociocultural learning principles, which pushed us to make it multiplayer. We wanted players talking, arguing, collaborating, basically creating the learning environment themselves. Seeing those theories actually come alive through mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics was one of the first moments where I thought, “Oh. I’m really applying theory to practice. This is fun!”
P2 (interactive fiction) let me lean on something that felt familiar: storytelling. Here I got to play with narrative design and emotional arcs, and I used Jenkins’ 4E’s Narrative Design framework to figure out how to create empathy and SEL moments through the structure of the story. My playwriting background finally had a place to shine too, from short scenes, branching choices, to little moments meant to make the player pause and reflect. What surprised me most was realizing how narrative itself is a system. The way a scene is written can subtly guide decisions, influence emotional responses, and shape the overall experience. This project reminded me why I love storytelling in the first place.
P3 (systems) pushed me into completely new territory. It was a systems game that we had to create, and additionally, it needed to be of higher fidelity. So for this sprint, systems thinking became the core of this project, from balancing resources, refining the core loop, to adjusting tiny mechanics to see how they changed player behavior. I ran more playtests than I had ever done before. I used to get so nervous before each one, but repetition made a huge difference. Every session, every confused player, every unexpected emergent behavior taught me something concrete about UX, clarity, and design. I also opened Figma for the first time, stared at the blank canvas, and wondered how on earth people graphic design anything. But slowly, with enough feedback from others and youtube tutorials, I figured out how to graphic design from scratch– it’s a small step but I’m glad to have gotten started.
P4 (refinement) felt like everything came together. Things that once scared me–iterations, playtesting, graphic design– all suddenly felt very natural. I could sketch a low-fi prototype, watch how players interacted with it, and then move into higher-fi designs with much more confidence. The Sophia framework played a big role here, especially in how we structured challenge and feedback so players could genuinely feel themselves moving from uncertainty to mastery. This final project was a reminder that all the uncomfortable first attempts earlier in the quarter were absolutely worth it.
I learned this:
The biggest takeaway and learning that I leave with is this shift in mindset. I moved from seeing games as finished products to seeing them as iterative knowledge artifacts shaped by cycles of hypothesis, prototype, test, and reflection. “Action is the best antidote to anxiety” also became a principle that I hold close to my heart now: prototyping early (even paper prototypes) helps reduce fear and surfaces useful failure/ potential pitfalls. I now appreciate failure as informative data rather than a setback.
Practically, I learned to design intentionally, separate mechanics from dynamics and to target aesthetics deliberately. I now understand how to craft surveys and metrics that reveal whether a mechanic achieves the intended learning outcome. I learned to design for social learning, and how multiplayer dynamics can scaffold motivation and promote engagement. I also gained basic visual design skills in Figma and enough narrative design practice to create emotionally resonant interactive moments.
When I go to make games in the future, I will…
Carry this iterative, human-centered mindset into every project. I will ground design choices in frameworks, like MDA/MDAO for systems clarity and Sophia for scaffolding learning and motivation. I will start small with paper prototypes, test early and often, and build playtest cycles that ask focused questions. I will design for a specific player experience goal, craft a clear core loop, and measure outcomes with targeted assessments.
Going forward, I know I want to keep centering people in everything I design. User research and empathy will stay in the driver’s seat, because the most meaningful games, especially those meant for learning or SEL, start with understanding what players feel and hope for. Practically, I’m going to keep sketchnoting as a core part of my design process. It really grounds me and helps me think. I also want to keep working in a cross-functional way, pulling together storytelling, systems thinking, UX, and evaluation, because I’ve learned that my best ideas come from that blend rather than any one single skill. Most of all, I really do want to add more fun into the world. This class showed me that rigorous design and joyful play aren’t opposites at all; they make each other stronger. I came into the quarter a complete beginner, and I’m leaving with a toolkit, new habits, and a way of thinking that makes me genuinely excited to keep creating games that matter! Thank you Christina and Butch for a fulfilling intensive quarter of game design and learning that felt truly meaningful!
