Communication and Community
What was most surprising was that CS 377G, above all, had a ton of writing. Sometimes, it felt more like a writing class than an HCI/design class. I have never written so many Medium posts. I’m not sure what more I can say that I haven’t already said in other Medium posts. But I think this is a great opportunity to take a step back and reflect on what the class was like as a whole.
The reason why there were so much writing was because, I realized, game design is a lot about writing. It’s writing a pitch to people who would be the investors, publishers, or players. It’s writing a clear set of rules. It’s writing the story (cough cough IF cough cough). It’s writing the process behind your game and persuading other people why playing this game is not a waste of their time.
But writing is just one of the most straightforward means of communication. Game design is ultimately about communication! A game designer tries to communicate her intent towards the players by the rules, the aesthetics, the system, the objects. And she communicates the value of her game to coworkers, investors, (and professors) through presentations and documentations. On top of that, each game players communicate with each other to win together (as in co-op games like Pandemic) or to deceive each other (as in One Night Werewolves).
Through communication, a community starts to form. I think this is fascinating. This is a world where the individual becomes lonelier and lonelier, and communities get dissolved. National boundaries, ethnic boundaries, and ideological boundaries are fading, at least in the part of world I live — the world of cosmopolitanism. And this world is expanding.
Before the craziness of finals hit, I read a Korean novel called 표백. It argued that the current generation of South Koreans do not have a cause to fight for. Twentieth century was a turmoil of events for South Koreans. Pre-modern Joseon (the old name for Korea) fell into Japanese hands, and then after WWII, Korea was divided up into two halves, which went on to a civil war so murderous that it destroyed the centuries-old caste system, and then South Korea was under a military dictatorship for a long time until enough student demonstrations ousted the dictator. Previous generations of South Koreans could fight against pre-modernism, Confucianism, Japanese imperialism, North Korea, and anti-democratization. However, as of now, South Korea is more or less a stable well-developed country, with the fastest internet in the world and without much room for economical or social improvement. It’s like a startup that’s well past IPO and now just maintaining its code base. A character in 표백 argued that the current generation is living a life a despair, a life without meaning, a life just meant to be the clog in the machine. And to correct this, to rebel against the status quo, everyone should commit suicide.
I don’t agree with that. However, I do agree that humans need causes to fight for in order to feel fulfilled. A lot of gaming does fill in the gape of meaninglessness. At least in games, you are the king who has to fight off barbarians. Or develop a civilization into completion. Or find the werewolf to kill. But it’s more than that. When I’m playing a game, I feel like I’m part of something. I feel like I’m part of a cause, part of a team. Maybe not as intense as anti-Japanese freedom-fighters or anti-dictatorship student activists, but there is a sense of comradeship that grows from playing a game with other people (or even by yourself, with all the intricate characters and systems game designers have designed for you). That was most intensely obvious from the Escape Room experience.
And this gets to why I want to run an Escape Room business eventually. If game design is about communication, game play is about community! I’ve never been as close to everyone in a class at Stanford as in this class (maybe for the exception of Painting II, where the silent comradeship grows from staying up in the studio together the night before critique). And that owes a lot to all those games we’ve played together.
In the future, when I make games (hopefully one day I’d have enough funds to actually launch Escape Rooms), I want to make a game that is 1) very aesthetically pleasing and well-designed because I am an artist at heart, 2) has a compelling narrative, but most importantly 3) fosters comradeship and community. I think 3) is the most serious issue I want to tackle as well. I am passionate about human connection and the feeling of belonging, and if I could achieve that by making something interesting and beautiful, and inviting other people to enjoy it, that would be so rewarding.
After finals week, I’m flying to Thailand. After spending a few days in Bangkok, I’m visiting Chiang Mai, which is apparently the best place for digital nomads due to beautiful nature, cheap prices, and established coworking spaces. A lot of different people from different countries gather and work on their own thing, sometimes making friends out of each other. But I heard they are all kind of lonely, away from their home, drifting in space. Maybe I will try to play some games with them, and think about how I could launch an Escape Room business for such cosmopolitan locations.
