Xavier Gonzalez, Class of 2026

Game Design helps students become immersed in using real code for the first time and a simpler version of code beforehand theses being Unity and Scratch. It teaches you the concept of actual game design, time balancing and imagination being the key to making your games more unique. Coding involves structure and order in order to create something that is performing in the way you intended through trial and error. We not only just learn code but historical actions and events within video game history involving many generations from table tennis for two to the Playstation 2. It also is great as there are videos for days that you have missed. This class specializes in providing a clear understanding of how code is being used and how to make something great out of it. 

There are a few challenges to this class, however. For example, there are times where you struggle to import assets which can happen occasionally from time to time. In other cases you are too far behind because of an error message or from the properties of the gameobjects you have in your game. For example, today I was making a space station in which we needed to add a staircase. It was very confusing however due to moving Level 1 on top of Level 2 and creating a hitbox for that ladder especially in order to make your character go up smoothly back to Level 1. In some cases I feel like time is also not on my side but not for the reason you think. The real reason I think this way is because I will have a day or so left of doing nothing as I already completed the project but I feel like I can add more on to it.

I recommend others to take game design even if they don’t want to become a coder. I believe this improves your time management and real adaptation to situations such as being behind or glitches in your game that you will have to face constantly. This can help improve how much you can do in such little time. It will not only make you do better when coding but also in real life. In many situations in jobs you have a situation that you always need to fix in very complex or simple ways that take a long or short amount of time or have to be piled with more work intended. It’s not just a class to me but a form of art and learning to become a more independent person.