A Reflection on Designing Serious Games
How I think about games
Before this class, I didn’t have any strict definition of what games are, what they do, and what I thought about them. I thought a game was just an activity with rules that is fun to play and sought to achieve some goal. It was a very loose definition of a game, but essentially when it came down to it, I knew a game when I saw one.
While I don't think that my new perception or definition of games has become any more strict, after taking this class it has become significantly more crystalized. The way that I think about games is intrinsically intertwined with the way that I think of stories. Something that really stuck with me from the beginning of the class all the way to the end was an analogy that Christina drew between games and any other story-based medium. Whether that be books, movies, newspapers, TV, or games, each of these is just a different vessel for telling a story and each vessel has its different strengths and weaknesses. In a story, you have a specific outcome that you are trying to reach and you are trying to take a user through a journey to reach that outcome via whichever vessel you choose.
If there is one thing moving forward that I know I will take from this class, it is that stories are powerful and they can make a difference.
377G Key Takeaways and Learnings
Playtesting
Technically, coming into this class I already knew that when it comes to making games, playtesting is one of the most important things that you can do. However, I definitely didn’t know the extent of the truth in that statement and I still probably don’t. Every single project that I worked on in this class, I playtested more and more and in each project, I could see the positive impact that the playtesting was making on my games. For example, looking back at when I was getting started with P1, my group had a few meetings where we would spend multiple hours trying to balance our game or talk about the different outcomes certain mechanics would have without ever once thinking to actually playtest the version of the game that we were working with. However, by the time I reached P3, playtesting was essentially the entirety of what our group meetings consisted of and as we playtested, all of the changes that we need to make revealed themselves to us naturally.
In addition to understanding the importance of playtesting, this class has also helped me build my skill as a playtester. For example, when to take the feedback you get versus when not to, how to listen deeply to not only what people are saying but also to what they are doing, and how to have a mindset of growth and gratitude. I still have a long way to go when it comes to playtesting, but I am excited to learn more.
Writing a Story
During P2 in this class, we got to experience what is like to write a fictional story. This was a process that I learned a lot from. The first major learning that I got from this experience is that writing a story is incredibly challenging. Although I had a good idea of how I wanted my story to play our from start to finish in terms of the plot, I found that actually filling the gaps between major plot points is not an easy task. The second major learning that I had from this project was that writing can be a great form of meditation and self-reflection. I found that when I was writing I was trying to express things that were actually happening in and around me through my characters and story, I was forced to really address those things and wrestle with fully understanding them.
Arcs, Loops, Models, and Systems
Another thing that I learned from this class is that games are great for modeling systems. There are so many different parallels between real-world systems and the systems that are implemented in games. In particular, in real life, there are arcs, loops, and models in just about every system that is around us and if we can capture and convey the core arcs, loops, and models in that system then we can use those to tell a compelling story of what is going on around us.
One of the things that I loved about the systems sections of this class was learning about all of the different types of models that we could use to describe and represent the things that are happening around us. Whether that be the bathtub model or the fishbone model or any of the other types of models that we learned, it can be incredibly useful to use these models to not only communicate what is going on, but also to simply help ourselves understand and think through a problem. This is an ability that I am far from an expert on, however, I got a taste of how to do it in this class and is something that I plan to continue working on as I go through my learning process. I think that this skill of identifying those core arcs, loops and components of real-life systems and model them is something that can be applied far beyond the world of games in my life.
Document Everything
Documentation is important and although this seems like an incredibly easy task, sometimes it can be more difficult than it seems. If you do something, take a picture of it. It will probably be helpful down the road because, at the end of the day, you want to be able to tell the story of what you did and why.
Conclusion
I learned a lot more from this class than I ever would have expected about not only games, but also design in general and even about myself. I am beyond grateful for the teaching staff and students that I got to learn any play games with all quarter long. It was so much fun to come to class and was always a bright part of my week 😃
