Game Playtesting 2 - ETEC-526
Ami Stovall posted Sep 8, 2021 1:20 PM
1. How did you feel?
I began quest three this week with a bit of apprehension, but I pushed through and continued on with the gaming. Early on, I noticed that using those keyboard keys to navigate the missions wasn’t as difficult as last week. Each mission had a specific purpose as well, and I focused on the purpose of the mission, which did serve me well at accomplishing them with minimal retries. This week also, I noticed that playing this game didn’t evoke the same highly uncomfortable emotions and frustration that I experienced last week, which was great! Although I still felt stressed as I navigated through some of the more challenging levels (for me), and surprisingly when I went into the Clean Slate mission, which is where I was charged with building a game from scratch following a series of parameters. I thought I was adding all the required walls, enemies, etc., using all of the tools, but it took me a long time (almost an hour) on that mission alone, which was stress-inducing and frustrating, but I finally was able to “publish” the game, which told me that I won that mission. For some reason, with these types of games, I will play them (especially with kiddos in my family), I don’t get the warm, and fuzzies as I play, and more often than not, I end up very frustrated, and cutting the gametime short, and then I just watch others play. For me, the stress and frustrations that these types of games evoke from me do not motivate me to want to play, most often, no matter what, because I don’t find the reward of simply just “winning” (if you will) worth my valuable time or those uncomfortable negative emotions I feel when playing them. However, struggling through playing Gamester Mechanic has a benefit for me in learning about gaming and simulation for education and learning, which outweighs the struggle, uncomfortableness, and negative emotions. Also, I do recognize that to become good at creating games for learning, I must first play games and learn more about the overall purpose and process so that I can possibly create games within a course or training that I facilitate moving forward in my career.
2. What did you learn?
As I eagerly (not) dove into my next round and assignment of Gamestar Mechanic, and especially when I managed to navigate to the missions where I was asked to either repair the game or build the game, I began thinking more in-depth about the programming involved that probably many individuals go through just to create the characters, events, movements, purpose, rules per level, thinking about how one would contribute to, or add value to the game, missions, quests, levels, strategies, etc. so that it will help maintain the player’s interest among many other purposes and goals for a given game. Now that I have been led via this course to give some thought and careful consideration to gaming in general as well as gaming for learning, I am amazed to think of all of the parts, processes, and pieces that go into creating and/or building a game, and especially those where various forms of technology are involved. It reminds me of a required art course I took in college called Introduction to Drama. It was during winter term, so we had basically 11 days to cover sixteen weeks’ worth of content related to drama, in which the professor had us read movie scripts, watch specific movies that detailed and highlighted the parts involved in making a movie, designing a stage in preparation for an upcoming theater production, including the lighting (from Moulin Rouge for example), the set, the locations, the wardrobe, the makeup, the musical scores, the gaffers, and the cast, producers, directors, etcetera. Then we would take time to break down those parts, pieces, and processes with the professor, who was fabulous at facilitating those brief, intense, eye-opening, and exciting areas of this memorable content. I genuinely look at entertainment with a very different pair of eyes now. Until then, I hadn’t thought much about the specifics involved in movie, film, and theater production. When a person takes time to go through and ponder those types of details associated with the process and stages that go into movie making, for example, then you begin to appreciate the final product, which helps in shifting your perspective so that you will hopefully be more invested in it, so then when you are asked to build and or repair a game (a good one, or even a sorry one). Either way, many people learn from these tools, resources, successes of creating a super game, or even learning from the mistakes of building a sorry game in preparation for developing and building the next out-of-this-world game. I am slowly beginning to appreciate the time, thinking, creativity, tools, and resources and the great-minded people who develop, build, create, and repair games and simulations for learning. I am also imagining and learning that either way, building the game, or playing the game, it is painstaking, respectively.
-Ami
ETEC-526