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.
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
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