A Call To Adventure
Throughout the course of my college career, I have continuously been faced with divergent paths. Will I study Education? English? Within English do I want to focus on Creative Writing? Literary Criticism? Well, maybe a little of all of the above. I do not know much about game-writing, programming, coding, or even analysis. I do know, however, that the game industry is one of the most profitable, extensive creative field in the world right now. Regardless of my path, an understanding of the way games are made and enjoyed will benefit me. Throughout this class, I hope to put my critical analysis skills to the test against interactive experiences as well as apply my own creative prowess to games of my own creation. The additional element of player input will force me to contemplate plot choices and character development in a new way, and hopefully inspire me in all areas of writing and criticism.
An Update on My Adventure
Throughout my game-writing experience, I have learned a great deal about how I write, create plots, and edit projects through collaboration with teammates. In my first project, the CRIT, I first learned that I am not very adept at video editing. However, I learned a lot about video and audio editing software, like Adobe and iMovie, that I will surely use in future presentations and projects. As for the content matter, I discovered that I have quite an inclination to analyze for theory. Put a simple farming game in my hands and I just might have to perform a thorough Marxist analysis of the mechanics. That being said, my ambition sometimes got the better of me, as I had a hard time reigning in my ideas to stick to the original assignment. Throughout my CRIT process, I had to rewrite my scripts several times to stay close to the mechanic-centered guidelines. Of course, I did discover how games can be a whole new medium of relaying political ideas and forcing the player to see problems in society that they may not realize in their daily life. Additionally, games are accessible to most and can convey complex ideas through pretty simple dialogue and gameplay.
During my A.G.E. experience, I really let my imagination run wild with a witch-themed game. I had always had a love for hidden-role/mystery games and saw this as a perfect opportunity to incorporate my favorite mythical (and unfortunately historical) theme into a Secret-Hitler style party game. However, I sometimes struggled to reconcile my big ideas with the practicality of planning a game. At times, I couldn’t find a fun fictional twist to put on the rules. At other times, I struggled to fit the rules into the fictional story line I had created. The play testing really showed me how complicated the game had become throughout the writing process, so I would probably try to reduce some of the complications if this were to be a published game. Overall, this was yet another experience in which my ambition got the best of me. The A.G.E. taught me yet again how important it is to refer back to guidelines and edit consistently as I go.
The D.I.E. might have been my favorite experience to design plot for. As I am currently binging West World on HBO, I couldn’t help myself but to throw some of my Ole West inspiration into a choose-your-own adventure game. After seeing videos from game critic BrutalMoose about the notoriously bad The Town With No Name, I drew inspiration from the clue-hunting aspect of the mysterious Wild Western Town. With no prior experience with coding or creating game art, we decided to use Twine to code our game for a simple point-and-click experience. Though I did very little hands-on with the actual coding of the game, I worked hard to create a seamless plot full of mysteries and cooky characters to draw players in. Even in the plot-writing element, I had some troubles though. The direction I started in got a bit turned around along the way, and it became more of a parody than an homage. However, since plenty of great Western games already exist, we decided to capitalize further on the humor and make our game more of a satirical, funny experience. I’m usually not so great at writing comedy, but with a theme as classic as the Old West, I was able to free myself from the typical overthinking that marks my writing and let my sense of humor gallivant through the saloon.
Overall, I have really enjoyed the different ways in which this class has put my writing skills to the test. I have had to focus on sticking to guidelines which has helped me to maintain direction in my writing. Additionally, as I hope to be an English professor one day, this class taught me how to portion group work effectively and encourage equal distribution of work through deadlines, scheduling, and phases of projects. Just as games can never be created alone, neither can a great piece of writing.
