I really enjoyed reading Chapter 6. It brought back a lot of memories of games that I nearly forgot. I usually don’t refer to myself as a “gamer” because: well, I use a Mac, have a Steam account but forgot its password, and Minecraft is pretty much the only game I play on my laptop. This has caused me some (very mild) insecurities when I try to talk to people who work, or want to work, in the game industry. But the examples in this chapter reassured me that I don’t have to play LOL or CSGO to confidently say “I play games” – there are plenty of other great games out there!
Incidentally, I also just realized that this insecurity in games is sort of an analogy to people who say “I don’t create music” because they haven’t gone through formal musical training. After relating these two thoughts, I suddenly see more clearly the purpose of designing a variety of musical interfaces – knowing that my design might become the “Tofu Burger” for someone in the world is a great motivation! (Principle 6.20: The Tofu Burger Principle).
(Also, I must confess that I skipped the few pages on Save The Date because it sounds like a great game, and I have already downloaded it and am planning to play it on Tuesday during class time in honor of 256A. I will read the discussion after – I usually do this for good movies when I see a movie review that involves a spoiler alert, and this is the first time I did it for a game!)
Coming back to discussing video game design, two principles I found interesting are:
Principle 6.1: Play is what we do when we are free, play is what we do to be free.
And
Definition 6.9: Play is free, voluntary, uncertain, unproductive by choice; it occurs in a separate space, isolated and protected from the rest of life.
I find the connection between playing games and freedom interesting, because it certainly makes me feel this way. Some of my best game experiences in childhood came from making up adventure stories with my brother using our teddy bear plushies and LEGO. (Sort of like in-person RPG?) Now thinking back, it was so intriguing largely because of the freedom I had in it – I get to decide what my characters can be, their identity, skills, history, and more. However, after giving my character an identity, I would then follow it so piously that any action would need to be justified by the set of “rules” initially made by myself. Therefore, I think the freedom came from being both the creator and the disciple, in a world separate from real life, just as stated in Definition 6.9.