Welcome to Games Are Hard. The name comes from a phrase my professor Dr Scott Nicholson used to shout out whenever we would mess up playing a game. I loved it and immediately added it to my own vernacular and even started a podcast with some friends of the same title.
For those who know me, you’ll know I’ve been writing about games for a while on my other blog Power Couple Productions. It’s a small project I started a while ago and recruited my girlfriend to where I write about mostly video games. And while we do get into more in-depth analysis and discussion of games we never really touch the design and development of games. That’s where this blog comes in.
Games Are Hard will dive into the concepts, theories and ideas around game design and serve as a journal of my thoughts as a designer. I will then take these analyses and apply them to the real world. These posts are opportunities for me to demonstrate my understanding of game design and hopefully, one day, showcase my mastery of the craft and my ability to apply them to meaningful experiences.
A lot of my posts to start will draw from my current game design class “Introduction to Interactivity” and several readings from that course. So while I’m not sure where this blog will go or what it will become I know that for the next couple months it will serve as a small portal of insight into my growth as a designer and (hopefully) what I’m learning. Thanks for reading!
Stephan Reilly 