Week 01 - Reflection

I'm taking this class because I have a specific interest in learning how proper game design works.  With a background in creative media industries, I love to work with production heavy equipment but I've always had an interest in game design. I believe this class will allow me to explore that curiosity while still being relevant to my creative media skill set.  Sicart states that "through play we experience the world, we construct it and we destroy it, and we explore who we are." The relevancy of this quote relies on the interactions my brother and I had growing up playing tabletop games. Some of my favorite series my brother and I played were D&D as well as Magic the Gathering. Being a fan of tabletop games, by proxy my brother and I would explore a plethora of video game series. Although not limited to, we were hooked on the Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, and the Final Fantasy series. I can vividly recall my brother and me playing these games behind our parent's backs just for those extra hours past our bedtime.  We needed that "occasional freedom and distance from our conventional understanding of the moral fabric of society" Sicart expresses in his book. The design behind those games truly hooked us for hours on end, yet there are aspects I'll never understand behind the scenes that make the game so captivating. I hope to learn those behind the concepts that keep the player hooked on a game. 

Currently, I'm making my way through the Castlevania series through a series of emulation. I've just about beaten all the main entry Castlevania games with Castlevania II: Simon's Quest being my lastest completion. While the game was truly not kind to me, I can finally scratch that off the list. As stated by Sicart, "Individual play is a challenge to oneself, to keep on playing." Having just completed Simon's Quest, I have come to fully understand this sentiment. It would have been easy to drop the controller and move on to the next entry, sticking with the game was purely out of self-exploration to challenge me. Castlevania: Curse of Darkness is the one holding my attention at the moment and, as of now, is looking to be one of the better 3D renditions of the series. In contrast to Sicart's example of Proteus as an "experience to which we open ourselves; we co-create an experience while engaging with that world in the mood of the play." Castlevania: Curse of Darkness seeks to deliver a more streamlined experience to gameplay and story that enables the player to use the tools in a more active experience.  Although, I don't think anything will surpass my love for Symphony of the Night. 

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to this class! 

- Ortiz