Spilt processes in game design

YEAR 2, WEEK 6 - Design inspiration and new ideas

Current thesis thoughts:

I'm not enjoying the fact that I'm learning to like writing again. I've spent a lot of mental hours training my mind into believing I'm not good at it, having this gradual flow into it makes some frustrations I have gone away but new ones come up. turns out I could always write I just had bad teachers.

Summary:

As I've gotten further in my workflow into the semester my ideas have started to grow as well. While this does not affect how I orient myself from day to day have found that it is altering the trajectory of what I pay attention to in my thesis exploration. I'd be remiss in saying this for fear of sounding less than professional but I'm finding that I'm having fun in indulging the self in my work. coming from a background in which I've heavily been told that it is not ok to do so I've decided to let that part go a little bit.

Weeks work:

We're told not to work on one thing more than the other, but as a designer, I find myself never listening to that, which has actually been to my detriment. I usually leave the fun work to the end which in turn makes it a slog, but it always worked out as I had holistically created work that has the same level of care put into it.

but this time around I decided I would just, do the fun stuff, I would design things for my games and may not end up being used at all or worse be thrown away even at a polished stage. I wasn't a fan of character sprites that stood stills they moved around in unity, to be frank, it gives me a headache, the sprite should always move even in a rough design. I'm not sure why that was a hill was willing to die on but it turned out to be really helpful for me to understand myself as a designer.

as I'm learning that games are this multi-legged entity.

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So we are learning that games operate sort of like this diagram a stool comprised of 3 legs all that need equal parts of emphasis applied to art (aesthetics, writing, music if applicable), mechanics (how the game functions and feeds back toward the player) and tech (how the game is delivered and or consumed.)

for my own sanity, I altered the stool in my head and came up with this version of it. and it actually came from a conversation with a designer colleague of mine Simone who stated "sometimes it feels like a game didn't have a designer who understood user experience very well" while it's argued that comfort can be applied to other legs. for the sake of my analogy I would argue that comfort needs to be considered its own part of the stool. while it could mean that it alters design or mechanics or how tech is used it should be at the forefront of the design. nobody wants to use a wobbly stool but nobody wants to sit on one that isn't comfortable either? this may be me talking out of my ass but it helps contextualize the very real idea that I can't get people in the right headspace to play a game if it's no fun fo them

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Reflections

While my design documentation is focusing less on the DOING of design at this point I do feel excited by the concept of working on games now. I see it as a tool that I can put my own eye to as well as my design philosophies. that above all the people involved do not feel unwelcome.

Readings

The art if game design Jesse schell

Writing Up Qualitative Research Third Edition Harry F. Wolcott

Let oneself go a bit

YEAR 2, WEEK 5 - Design inspiration and new ideas

Current thesis thoughts:

What can I teach, "you are an expert of some things perhaps you can teach people how to make a comic" - Peter

"There is a lack of confidence in your work that I'm seeing that you may want to address" - Maria

"try making 100 little things and see what comes out of that" -Scott

Approach:

It's hard to get started on things when you have no idea what it is you want to do. it's doubly hard when you trick yourself into thinking you don't know anything. this week has been a bit of a slog as I have gone into my game design courses trying to figure out the concepts that I want to translate into my games. and we arrived at this interesting conversation of what makes a game satisfying. looking that the idea of "satisfaction" as a key element in game design was the new direction I decided to just follow, rather than my bigger ideas.

Exploration:

my current course work is just trying to see what makes a game flow well because these courses are someone that introductory it gives me the opportunity to think more on intent in the realm of design and not just what I think looks good. in all honesty, I do think I'm faltering a little bit.

as it stands to date I've only worked on reskinning old games and to fit new themes and aesthetics, and while I could spend this documentation talking about my workflow in creating this image to better talking about the new small narrative written for a game of "Sorry" That doesn't feel all together helpful in my process. at the moment I feel like I'm starting from square one. and that level of frustration probably comes from the coursework being a bit smaller than I'm used to. developing my own creations isn't the same as working on creations of others to make them better and from looking at the syllabus I find that is all I'm doing for a while.

which isn't a bad thing! By all accounts, I am new to this field and my ideas of what makes what possible in design may or may no translate to this new work area.

Use of aesthetics in game narrative.

while working on my own game design to better fit my style I found that I was actually not designed a good-looking game. and I kind of make for the lack of a better word "ugly" assets.

In conversation with Scott these cards are bad, their graphic design is abysmal and their hierarchy is missing. which I wanted to be the point, it was supposed to feel rough and crunchy but that wasn't what my players were getting from it, it was just ugly. which may be something that forces players out of a playspace.

you can totally generate an image that is ugly by design but to me, ugly needs to feel like little care was placed in the design's layout. that makes everything feel sort of straining. however, this cut into the flow a lot! players had a hard time looking for the important information on their cards and because it wasn't standardized they sometimes go lost.

so this is where I've resolving to make new card designs in the later weeks.

Questions for the week ahead .

There is a difference between outsider and beginner when it comes to design and I want to know what it takes to make the shift. What makes you a game designer other than designing a game?

Decimations of information through design

YEAR 2, WEEK 4 - Design documentation and process

Approach:

In meeting with Scott Swearengen over the last few weeks I have come to the conclusion that one of my drawbacks in documentation is in its format. currently, my documentation is solely meant for the self and reformated in an attempt to best translate that information. however, I do not write with the intent to be read. Design documentation is now in my sights as a very real approach to understanding my own process not just from the standpoint of figuring out where I am from week to week but to have a concrete representation of a finished product or artifact. this idea that I could write with the intent of pedagogical interpretation is also something I'm slowly gaining a new grasp on through explorations in writings in my classes with Dr, Richarson, not only in breaking down complex readings on the importance of tone and perspective shifts but the idea that storytelling can be utilized in academic writings.

Exploration:

Over the summer I had worked on creating a game with Scott Swearengen with the intent of it being played with others over virtual communication. It was a successful first attempt and my ability to talk about it was fairly eloquent, however, I lacked the proper documentation that would adequately explain how I came to any sort of design documentation I would have thought was useful. as a result, I plan on using this time to reformat my documentation of said game into a format that can be easily consumed by an outside reader and designer.

In this brief introduction to game design, I focused on rendering out the best possible mode of communicating an idea with a smaller design footprint. As such this artifact would lend itself to a being the best model for design documentation as it allows for a smaller collection of documentation. the only issue is formating which I am currently in the initial stages of rendering out on paper.

Questions for the Week ahead:

What information do I need to relay to a reader to give them the best amount of information without undoing redundancies

what's the best method of collecting information to redistribute into a written document that I will not have access to in the future to give further context.