Week 01 - First Time Player

I’m taking Designing for Play to better understand the kinds of fields I hope to work in! I plan to be a concept artist and storyboarder for all types of media, and I think it’s extremely important to learn to think like a creator and not just an artist. Making my art look good and match with the setting I’m working with also means understanding the expectations of the media, both in the aesthetics and the actual play. This class is much different than the digital work I usually do, but I think it’s just as important to work with tangible items. I’m not sure where I want to end up, or what forms my final products will be in, but it could very well be in classic physical games.

I love to tell compelling stories and engage with the audience I make my work for. More than anything, creating art is a way to make others happy. Our reading puts this in a great way by summarizing that “happiness may give you time to play, to live in a different way” (Sicart, pg. 1). If games are a way for others to find joy in their lives, or if it gives them something to love and obsess over for years, then I’m more than happy to try and make some. “Play appropriates events, structures, and institutions to mock them and trivialize them, or make them deadly serious” (Sicart, pg. 3). This quote I love so much because it’s something that I really do believe in. I don’t want to make realistic things, and I don’t want to work strictly in reality. I want to take the topics of the world, of fiction, of other artists, and make my own little something out of them. To be a creator is to be an activist, to make comments about life, to bring to light certain topics, good or bad. If there’s something in game design that pushes my creative limits of what’s possible, then that’s just another reason to dive in.

“Play has a purpose of its own, but the purpose is not fixed” (Sicart, pg.16), and that seems true considering all the different styles of play I’ve encountered. I grew up on board games like Monopoly and Life, on conventional card games like Old Maid and strange ones like Mao, on social games like Mafia and Concentration, and on silly games like Spoons and Musical Chairs. I still like to play Cards Against Humanity, still enjoy trading cards, but I also played tennis for so many years of my life. I still follow up on volleyball and archery ever year, and I also play video games. Splatoon is one of my all-time favorite video games, and I play a lot of Nintendo titles, too. My favorite game to play is Dungeons and Dragons, though. Sitting down at a table together, socializing and building and action-epic world with each other makes me so happy, and I love it so much that a lot of the art I make centers around building that big world with my little group of friends. All these games have different needs and wants, they fulfill different criteria. Some I did just to spend time with others, others were to create and build. A few of those games fueled my competitive spirit, and a couple were just to have some fun.

“Play is creative, in that it affords players different degrees of expression inherent in the play activity itself (Sicart, pg.17)” I’m very optimistic about this course, and I hope to come out of it with a set of creative skills I didn’t have before. I’m excited to see the ways I can express myself though games, and I’m excited to see my personal style come out, too. I’m really anticipating seeing how others react to it and how they interact with it. I’m curious how my style of making compares to my classmates’ style of engaging.