A difference from when Sadie had been in the class was that 50 percent of the students were women, or at least presented as such.
Sadie laid out her expectations for the class. “I don’t care what programming languages you use, though I’m happy to give you advice about them. I don’t care if you use a game engine—but I think it’s good that you should understand what goes into building one. I don’t care what kind of games you make. Good games and bad games are not unique to a particular genre. There are brilliant casual games made all the time, even though people think of casual games as a lesser form. I play every sort of game myself. There are great games to be made for phones, just as there are great games to be made for PCs and consoles. I don’t expect your work to be super finished. I expect all of us to be honest and to treat each other with respect. It takes a lot of courage to put a game out there. As a designer, I’ve probably failed more than I’ve succeeded. And the one thing I didn’t know when I was your age was how much I was going to fail. Sorry if that’s a depressing note to end my introductory spiel on.” Sadie laughed. “But yeah, you will definitely fail. It’s okay. I absolve you in advance. This class is graded pass/fail, so you only have to succeed slightly more than you fail.”
The class laughed at Sadie’s joke. In the crucial moments that occur at the beginning of any class, she had succeeded in making them know she was on their side.
A dark-haired, dark-eyed girl named Destiny said, “You designed Ichigo: Ume no Kodomo in this class, right?”
“Japanese title, impressive. With my partner, Sam—”
“Mazer, right?” Destiny was on top of Sadie’s résumé. “Was Mazer in this class, too? I know he went to Harvard, but kids sometime cross-register here, right?”
“Mazer wasn’t in this class. As a game designer, he was completely self-taught. And I made Ichigo after I took this class. The games I made for seminar were a little simpler. It’s a lot to program two games in a semester, by yourself.”
Destiny nodded. “I love Ichigo. Seriously, it was my favorite game when I was a kid. Are you guys ever going to make an Ichigo III?”
“We used to talk about it, but I doubt it will ever happen,” Sadie said. “Okay, so, to go back to Destiny’s first question, I brought in a game I did make for this class. It’s called Solution. Since I’m asking you to be vulnerable, I figured that the least I could do was show you the kinds of things I was making back when I was your age. The graphics are old, but give it a play, and tell me what you think. Bear in mind, I was nineteen, and this was about the best you could get done in 1994 in about four weeks, for no money. Also, I guess I should tell you that the game was inspired by my grandmother.”
Sadie emailed her students a link to Solution.
The class opened their laptops and set themselves to playing Sadie’s juvenilia. Sadie played a couple of levels, too. The game was technically obsolete, but she felt the concept was still strong.
As the kids began to discover the secret of Solution, they made appropriate sounds of outrage. At the hour mark, Sadie called time on play.
“Tell me your thoughts,” Sadie said. “I want you to be candid. I can take it. Let’s start with the aesthetics of the game.”
They critiqued every aspect of the game. Sadie encouraged them to be ruthless, and she found she enjoyed defending herself and explaining the limitations of 1994. In general, the class appreciated the black-and-white graphics, though a boy in a beret asked Sadie if all games in 1994 were black-and-white. His name was Harry, and Sadie had memorized his name with the mnemonic trick Harr-ay with the ber-et. She would not be Dov. She would learn everyone’s names in the first week.
“No, Harry,” Sadie said, “we did indeed have color in 1994. It was an aesthetic choice. Something I’ve learned is that when you don’t have many resources, you have to be even more rigorous with your style. Limitations are style if you make them so.”
“That’s what I thought,” Harry said. “I didn’t actually think all games in 1994 were black-and-white. I meant, was it common?” Sadie made a note on her class roster: Black-and-White Harry.
“I liked the game a lot,” Destiny （Ume no Destiny） began. “I liked the idea of it, and I like that the game is political. But if I had a critique, it’s that the game is too nihilistic. After you figure out what the factory is making, the game gets…” Destiny searched for the right word. “…well, repetitive, I guess. It should move on to a different part of the game instead.”
“You know, Destiny, you’re not the first person to say that. That’s very astute, and I think if I’d had more time, I would have done exactly what you said. But sometimes, you have to make your game in the time that you have. If you’re always aiming for perfection, you won’t make anything at all.
“Mazer and I were best friends growing up, and we loved playing games together. We were obsessed with the idea of the perfect play. The idea that there was a way to play any game that had the minimal number of errors, the least moral compromises, the quickest pace, the highest number of points. The idea that you could play a game without ever dying or restarting. We’d be playing Super Mario, and if we missed even one gold coin, or got hit by one Koopa, we’d begin again. Yes, we were probably disturbingly obsessive and yes, we had a lot of time on our hands. Anyway, for a long time, I took this idea into the work I did as a designer, and it was absolutely paralyzing.
“You will inevitably bring games into this class that you aren’t one-hundred-percent happy with, and that’s okay. I want you to blow my mind. I want you to do great work, but I also just want you to work.”
A student named Jojo, who was wearing a hole-filled Mapletown jersey, raised his hand. （Jojo from Mapletown—Sadie made a note.） “Nice shirt,” Sadie said.
Jojo nodded, as if the wearing of the shirt had been a complete coincidence or something he’d been compelled to do by forces greater than himself. “I have a question: What did your classmates think of Solution back in the day?”
“Oh, I’m glad you asked that,” Sadie said. “They hated it. One of them even tried to get me thrown out of school.”
“For this?”
“Yeah, people don’t like it when you call them Nazis. That’s what my professor said, and it’s probably good advice. I have never made another game where I called a player a Nazi.”
The class laughed at Sadie’s joke.
“On that note, it’s four. I’ll see you next week. Jojo, Rob, you’re up first. Email your games to us no later than Sunday night, so we all have a chance to play them before next class.”
Destiny hung around in the back until the others had left. “Is it okay? I wanted to ask you one more question, but not in front of everyone.”
“Yes, of course,” Sadie said. “Walk with me to my office. I’ve got to pick up my daughter from the sitter at five.”
“You’ve got a kid?” Destiny said. “That’s cool. I didn’t think anyone in games had kids, because of the crunch hours.”