Chapter 6 of Artful Design was phenomenal! This quarter I am taking CS377G, where I am learning about videogame design. Many of the principles I learned in that class are echoed in this chapter! MDA is an extremely interesting framework and I love how it encapsulates all the ways games make us feel!

One of my favorite principles from this chapter is 6.18: “Gamefulness and fun do not have to come at the expense of expressiveness and vice versa”. When I was creating my interactive fiction for CS377G, I kept writing blobs and blobs of text without giving the player any agency. It may as well have been an ebook. Under principle 6.7: “all games require interaction and active participation,” it probably would not have been called a game. Later, I used quick time events and shorter sentences to get across what I wanted. Not only did these fun aspects make the pace of the game faster and more fun, from my playtests I learned that these mechanics increased overall understanding of the themes I wanted to present. The system that I was portraying was interesting all along, I just had to present it in a way that I could get others to understand. Some of my favorite sections in fast-paced games are the moments where one is forced to slow down. I enjoy when a balance is struck between gamefulness and expressiveness. The same is true for games like the Beginner’s guide, which is a narrative told through the lens of game design. WOW!

My discussion of the Beginner’s Guide will coincide with principle 6.5 “Games as mirrors of our humanness.” My favorite games are those that remind me of my humanness. The Beginner’s Guide reminds you of this by allowing you to explore a game designer's levels. As you explore these levels, a narrator tells you what he interprets this designer’s levels to mean. I will not spoil the plot of the game in case you haven’t played it (which you should). However, the medium of playing the video game makes the experience more intimate. You are exploring a creator’s levels which serves as a powerful metaphor for you exploring their mind. The game, through the simple mechanic of you walking through levels with very little interactivity, Forces you, as in the 4th wall breaking you, to decide for yourself what makes art sacred and why people create.