After reading this article, my view of game and game design has changed a lot. And the reading really has inspired me a lot. Before, I always observe games from a player’s view, focusing on the stories, the game worlds and models, the way of interaction and the art styles. But I seldom view a game from designers’ view, for example, how to design an interaction or combine two classic interactions together, or how to design the difficulty and new elements of each level to not make players feel bored. 

And it also teaches a lot about game history. I don’t pay a lot attention to game in last centuries like the 8 bit games or the arcade games and the composite games mentioned in the article. Since I don’t like the pixel art style very much and it is really tiring to look at those pictures. But I do respect those games and see them as the symbol of the early game industry. This article tells me my unfamiliar part of the game industry history.

Also, it shows me how people cooperate to make a game in a game company. And I can see clearer boundaries between designers and the programers than the industry before. There are many real big companies which keep making high quality 3A games. But I feel in this system, most of the staff are not creating bringing their own idea to the work, instead, they are making a big project but it is designed by few of them. And a big company can’t change their style easily. So that’s why I like indie games a lot and the games from some small teams.

Why people love to play video game? A general answer for this question given by many researchers can be game can make us experience a life or world different from our normal life. Hence, comparing to the novels, film and television works, games make people much more immersed in another world. Playing the game is the only way we interact with an imaginary world even until today.

I asked my roommates why they love to play video game, both of them mentioned the general reason mentioned above. And one of them, Tony, gave two other reasons. First one is that he feels playing games is the best way to kill time when he feels lonely when he is alone. Next one is that he thinks when he plays card game for example HearthStone at its early stage, he can get sense of accomplishment by thinking hard for best solutions. Another roommate Leon gave me a considerable answer, he says that by playing games of different ages, he can feel the advance of computer techniques. 

As for my own experience, I think video game is a fantastic art form,  for it blend visual, sounds and touching all together. Thus it is the most complete way to create or to experience the storytelling. And it also makes the game designers have a broader space to create their works than writers or musicians and directors. That is why I think video games have left us so many touching and exciting stories with strong impression. That is also why I think there are so many successful worlds with different artistic styles and so many creative and amusing ways of interaction in video games. A game design idea I want to fulfill in the following weeks can be to choose a cool artistic style and then use it to build a world which gives players a strange feeling while the place is not inharmony.