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?
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