I started getting into game design this past winter with a solo game dev project.
I told myself the reason I decided to work on that project alone was so I could learn at my own pace and build a holistic understanding of the game dev process. While that is true, I think another substantial reason is because I had no idea how to work on a creative project with others.
Creative vision is something that’s difficult to build collaboratively. There’s no clean role or task split, and creative ideas especially tend to carry with them a lot of pride. Especially as someone on the quieter side, the discussion-based structure of collaborative creative work was one of my biggest fears going into this class.
Between P1 and P2, I learned two major strategies that helped me effectively build playful experiences collaboratively: suspension of disbelief and detaching work from self.
With how many ideas being thrown around in our groups, a common situation is hearing ideas that you think are quite bad. How I had handled this situation in previous group projects was getting into lengthy arguments. How we handled it in this class was by playtesting it. In both my groups, we saved so much time and energy by making a quick playtest that could get definitive evidence instead of arguing in circles. For class content as well, suspension of disbelief, especially in trying out new genres of games for critical plays. In particular, I remember being particularly skeptical about embedded narratives, thinking of them more as glorified set pieces rather than substantive storytelling. But after trying it myself, during the walking sim critical play, a game genre I probably would have never touched otherwise, my perception completely changed.
One of the most memorable and devastating moments of P2 was when our playtesters mashed through the character lore I spent hours writing, skipping not only my effort at worldbuilding but also critical information to progress the game. At the beginning, this experience along with others I had in my team felt invalidating. Through that though, I realized that there are times where you put an authentic part of yourself into your game, but it’s not what the game actually needs. It doesn’t mean that that part of you has anything wrong with it or that you weren’t good enough to make it work, it just means that specific part of you would thrive in another place in your game, and you’ll eventually find it.
From this class, collaborative creative work has become something exciting rather than frightening. A solo-developed game has its place, but when the unique inspirations, experiences, and preferences of multiple people come together, the resulting game is not only stronger mechanically but I’ve seen firsthand how much richer the soul of the game can be (midwest emo gas station wacky potion brewing is absolutely something I could have never thought up on my own). This class has brought me immense happiness, both with what I was able to help create and with the friendships I built in the process.
