Hello,
I am here to share my experience taking CS 108 at SJSU with James Morgan. This will likely be my last post as the course is wrapping up the semester.
For anyone on the fence about taking this class, I highly recommend that you do. Despite the title of the class, ‘Intro to Game Studies’ I feel as though you are able to take away a lot from the class. We went through all sorts of topics from, analyzing games to creating our own! It was a rewarding experience, and I had a great time working with other people. The material was well connected and intuitive to pick up. We not only had the change to play games in class, but we also read and wrote about games that were interesting to us. The overall class experience was welcoming as students could constantly jump in on whatever subject that was being discussed and give their own input.
I think the biggest idea that I gained from this class is the concept of MDA analysis. Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics are all important features in a game and heavily relies on player interaction. Too often do I find myself simply playing a game without understanding what makes the game fun. Doing this kind of analysis makes me really understand what features are fun for me so that I can look for them in other games.
I took some of these mechanics and created my own video game. My game can be found here: https://hoopla221.itch.io/space-cat .
