Making a Video Game is Eerily Similar to Playing One
So I’m designing a Flash, persuasive game for my final project (walk by the computer lab in HEAV sometime and you might hear me cursing at the screen), and I had an odd thought during my hours and hours of desperate, frantic frustration. Basically, that the desperate, frantic frustration I’m having while designing a video game is very similar to the kinds I get while playing them. There’s a lot of similarity between the two processes.
A lot of the time I know what I want to happen in my game, just like I know my basic goal when playing a video game level. However, making this game is pushing my Flash skills to the extreme– basically involving semi-complex coding that I’ve never had to deal with before. Similarly, while playing a video game my foundational skills get used but I often have to make new ones. Or if I’m stuck, I can go online to a cheat or walkthrough site to beat the level, just as I’ve been scouring the net for information on the types of Flash coding I need to make my game work.
Playing a game, even if at a frustrating part, I will sometimes repeat tactics over and over, try new things, try the old tactics again, and basically spend hours playing. From the outside I may look angry, frustrated, or frantic. Despite this, I’m still having fun. Likewise, I’ve stared at the Flash code of my own game for hours, tweaking little bits and pieces, all in a desperate attempt to make one, little thing happen. Yet, it’s still incredibly fun. The amount of time it takes to make this game better be fun, or there’s no reason to do it!
Finally, there’s this huge sense of accomplishment I feel when passing a particularly hard part of a game. Likewise, I’ve danced around my house and the computer lab when I’ve finally managed to make a part of my own game function the right way.
I’m in Flash hell, people, and it’s a good/evil time. Seriously, I’m dreaming in Flash code now.