This semester represented a change in my academic focus. When I took on my master's project - designing a roleplaying game designed to teach activism - I knew I would need to learn to critically analyze games and learn how to view them as a designer. I had ambitions, to be sure, that I might be able to do this kind of design, and so I picked classes that would help me to develop those creative and critical 'muscles.' ART108 was the class I chose to tackle the design part of my goal.
I needed to orient myself towards game design and build up my library of texts and concepts, but also to actually *do* some design work. Knowing this didn't necessarily make the work less intimidating, but it made it feel immediate. I've played games for effectively my whole life, and they are still every bit as important to my life today as when I was younger. I play frequently - possibly more than I should - and I figured I probably knew something about what makes a game good, before the semester started. I was right, to an extent, but now I have a much fuller toolbox.
Getting to watch Extra Credits in class was just the icing on the cake
(even if - as we know - the cake is a lie)
Playing my Work
The concepts we studied in ART108 was vital to my project and my future dream of being a game designer. The work of Huizinga, the MDA framework, and Fullerton's in-depth process analysis are among the most valuable materials for my work. I feel like I have a whole new vocabulary to pull from when it comes to the components that come together to make games. Huizinga was an especially good introduction for me, as a social scientist, since the concepts he illustrated - such as the magic circle and the universality of play - meshed nicely with my anthropological training. The MDA framework gave me some tangible terminology and clarification to ideas I thought I'd understood previously, like how mechanics differ from dynamics (I think I probably conflated them in the past) and helped me to look at the different aspects of design from new angles. And the chapter from Fullerton was supremely useful to me taking the steps to conceptualize and iterate on designs - I've since purchased her book, and when I thinking of game design now, I take an iterative view, breaking down the steps and working through them systematically, rather than attempting to create designs from whole cloth.
What really made an impact, however, was getting to actually *do* design work. All the conceptual stuff in the world can't compare to doing something. Once I began doing iterative design, talking about concepts with peoples, and putting ideas together into actual prototypes, my whole way of thinking about game design changed. Since prototyping the game that has since become Spokesgoblins, I have come up with iterative designs for at least 5 other games, some inspired by that initial work, some based on other games, and some just because they sound fun. Now I start with my core concept and build out from there, making documents of my ideas and workshopping them, adding and removing elements, and changing things based on feedback and result.
I've also learned some new skills like doing basic pixel art, something I never seriously thought I could do. I'm still mostly copying other artists to start with and making changes to the initial frameworks, but I have a new eye and appreciation for art assets. I'm learning to work through what styles and approaches might work for different projects, and I have more confidence to do some simple graphic design for my games. Moreover, I've certainly enjoyed the positive feedback I've received when sharing my designs with others.
Someday this symbol may sit next to Zombie Dice and Cards Against Humanity
Takeaways
I found it to be quite gratifying to be able to work on projects with relatively open formats, getting to choose what kind of games we got to make, especially for the final. I had been so enthusiastic about my board game prototype that I knew pretty much right away that I would want to keep working on it for the final. Now that I have finished the version for the assignment, I am looking forward to creating a new prototype version to show to ever more people for playtesting, and I hope to get the game on some crowdsourcing site with the hopes of producing a finished retail version. I have a great deal more confidence in my design now that it has been played numerous times and had hours upon hours of time put into it. Hopefully before too long, Spokesgoblins will be a finished, printed reality.
The most interesting lesson I have learned from the course material is the amazing level of similarity between game design and social science research. Many of the concepts of good game design - iteration, hands-on approaches, workshopping ideas with others - have fascinating correlations to ethnographic approaches and anthropological theory. In anthropology we often have to go into the field to gather data and create hypotheses, which we test through iterative studies. Because of the varied nature of human behaviors, we have to constantly prepared to make observations and alter our theories to adapt to new data, just as game designers vigilantly test their new games on their peers and fellow players. I feel like game designed seemed so natural to me from the beginning, because I had already been learning the concepts from it for years - just under a different name.
In the end, there can be no doubt that I was able to envelop myself in games this semester - playing, designing, reading, and certainly writing, about them. It was an immersive experience that I feel made me grow both as an aspiring game designer and social science researcher. My goal now - besides making games that might someday see the retail shelf - is to take these lessons into my graduate research and to make Affinity - the game I am designing with Dr. Larry Bogad and fellow SJSU graduate student Chelsea Halliwell - an impactful game which will help to teach people about activism and social movements, which seems more and more to be a timely goal, given current geopolitical and environmental situations.
We can only hope - and design
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