Game Studies Course: A Reflection

It’s been a few months now ever since I created this “gaming” blog. This wasn’t something that I was expecting to keep on doing since it was initially just for a college course. But, after some time, I realized that I liked doing this kind of stuff. Writing my thoughts and my overall progress on learning, playing, and creating video games.

I have learned a lot from my classes throughout this semester. One class in particular, intro to game studies, made a significant impact in my “gaming” life. When I first enrolled to this class, I thought that it would be a boring class filled with semester-long papers. I was wrong. I didn’t exactly know what was going to happen in this class. The only thing I knew was that it had something to do with games, something that I was passionate about. As the semester progressed, I slowly started enjoying the class more and more. It was a safe-haven for people like me who enjoys playing video games. The more I enjoyed myself, the more I learned about game design and the overall aspect of games.

The most interesting thing that I learned in this class was the MDA (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) framework. I never knew that a framework such as this ever existed. I never viewed games in this perspective or manner before. I always saw video games in a consumer perspective (e.g. looking at graphics, gameplay, etc.) rather than a technical/designer perspective (e.g. level design, mechanics of the game, how to teach the player). This was an eye-opener for someone like me who’s aspiring to be a game developer. This knowledge of basic mechanics and level design helped me create my very first well-polished alpha game (The Adventures of Monkey King).

In all honesty, all of the topics in this class were fascinating and helped me understand games as a whole. The topics and material were connected and gave an overall representation of the game world in both an artistic perspective, and a programmer/designer perspective. Needless to say, this course succeeded in its objective of making me “read about games, write about games, play games and design games”. Thank you, professor James Morgan, for being an excellent professor and for providing a fun learning environment.