Designing serious games is hard
Some final thoughts and reflections to wrap up a quarter of game design.
Preface
Oh, what do I say to a class like this? Coming into 377G, I recognized three things:
- This would be my third time in a class with Christina, so I knew what to expect when it came to lectures and projects (or so I thought!),
- This would be the second time in my life I would make a game (the first time also being with Christina during 247, a game called Glass Ceiling), and
- This would be the first time I’d take a serious look at games as a medium for serious topics.
Now, don’t get me wrong — I fully recognized games at that point as an art and a medium through which we could teach people about dynamics present in our world (and I wasn’t dozing off in 247 or 377T!). However, I felt like even in those classes, I lacked the vocabulary and key concepts embedded in game design as a field to say I understood how serious games worked.
I entered 377G as an eager pupil, ready to bridge the gap I perceived between consuming good games and designing them.
Mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics, & outcomes
The process for creating my teaching game Just My Type was perhaps the most stressful for me this quarter, not least of which due to the fact that I had to do it alone and I would be gone for 5 days (!!!). And yet, I had such a blast focusing something I love (typography) and finding a way to teach it to people who might not necessarily know it the way I do.
By focusing on the aesthetics and outcomes (a party game! about fonts!) first, I was able to work backwards and finesse the mechanics and dynamics to help guide people toward the game’s learning objectives. This game was so much fun to playtest, not least of which because of the resulting dynamics between players. And I think that fun is reflected when I revisited the game for the last project (more on that later).
Emergence & progression
As much as I am proud of the work I did regarding my interactive fiction Terms of Service, this project was also such a pain of a sprint. I had grand ideas for a story, expansive worlds that ultimately came crashing down because three weeks is only so much time!
I come from a writing background (I used to do NaNoWriMo all the time since middle school), and so it was a fun opportunity to get back into narrative writing for a bit. Most critically though, I learned directly the importance of scope with regard to narrative fiction. I wasn’t about to go a NaNoWriMo pace during the development of this game, not least of which due to the emergent and divergent nature of interactive fiction — and yet, that didn’t excuse the need for the story to move forward somehow.
System dynamics, arcs, & loops
INCarceration, the system game our team made, was at once a fun and also sobering challenge to take on. For a start, developing a system game is just hard, period. It feels like we’re combining the narrative aspects of our interactive fictions with the learning objectives of our teaching games, and adding a healthy dose of reality into the mix. The “serious” in Designing Serious Games never hit closer than in this project.
Moreover, the prison-industrial complex is no doubt a deeply intricate system that targets our most vulnerable populations and monetizes their labor, so to make a game centered around that system and asking players to be complicit in that, all while handling the gravity of the topic with a deftness and clarity was a tall order.
I’m actually a bit disappointed with how INCarceration turned out — not for its appearance or concept, not for its converging outcomes or lessons, but for how it played in the final playtest and how players didn’t “get” the resolution.
There is no such thing as too much playtesting, we learned; indeed, playtesting is equivalent to usability testing in the design processes we quickly learned in 147 and 247. The challenge then, is to develop the insight to ask “what are we playtesting?” and recognize specific components of a game we want to get better at. We were so focused on balancing the game that at times we forget that players won’t explicitly recognize the game’s balance, but they’ll recognize how they feel and what they learned as a result.
Refine & release
To come out of this class with a professionally printed game that people can actually buy online and enjoy for themselves is wild. Truly. I knew from previous playtests I had a good game on my hands, and so it was so fun and rewarding to revisit this game and take it to the next level.
I’m excited to have gone through a quick and dirty process developing this game (recognizing that the reality of game design isn’t nearly this fast), and I’m excited about the prospect of making more games in the future.
Wrapping things up
If I could tell someone who’s considering taking 377G, I’ll say two things:
- Take it!
- Have courage in sharing your work. Share it often and with as many people as you can. The feedback that you get from others as a result of sharing your work often is invaluable, and your work can also find surprising ways to help others in a similar boat.
Flipping through my sketchnotes from this past quarter (a gift in their own right), I’m overwhelmed with how much I was able to learn and do. Thank you to Christina and Ben for an amazing quarter — we certainly hit a few bumps on the road, especially by the end of the class, but we rolled with the punches and chugged along thanks to your leadership.
I’m excited to come out of this class with games that I’m truly proud of, as well as having an absolute blast making them. Game night soon?
