My place in this woooooooorld

Ignorance is bliss, they say. Perhaps this has been my greatest source of uncertainty in our group experience. Uncertainty that our game ideas are actually *good*. And fun. These things which are potentially impossible to assess are required to be assessed during the design process. *Sigh*. The joys of entertainment.

And actually, it has been. I have actually really enjoyed working in a group to create a game idea, and then implement it. I won't go into the details of what I've already said I've gotten out of it, rather, I should probably mention what I actually ended up doing in the team.



As I have mentioned before, I was a bit of a jokester, but I also wanted to get all the work done. I would find myself constantly going over the lecture content in my mind during our group meetings, and ensuring nothing we were talking about was devoid of the key words, like "critical path" or "starting condition". That seemed to have served us well, if our marks for our design document are anything to go by.

On the topic of the design document, I was charged with the creation of the lengthy mechanics section. Admittedly, once I was halfway through it (standing at about the 6 page mark), I was thinking I shouldn't have picked the biggest section. Once I pushed out of that mindset, I found that it was actually quite a bit easier to think about design principles than I initially made out. There was just so much depth to what conflict actually was and how it took place, the intricacy of the rules, and the idiosyncrasies of game balance.

I'd like to view myself as the token nerd of our group. Before starting some key meetings, Tristan, Dan and I would sit and talk for about an hour about the games we really enjoyed and the ones we're looking forward to. 10 minutes in, two things were obvious: I'm an extreme Nintendrone, and I know too many games for my own good.

Actually, that isn't fair to say. It seems that my "past experiences with so many games", also known as my extreme nerdiness, has served me well in this unit and in this degree at large. I guess it makes sense: if you were doing film and TV, you'd have to be familiar with a LOT of movies, so one working in the games industry should do likewise with games.

Overall, a highly enjoyable group experience. I look forward to working in similar environments when I start work in the near future.