I had the opportunity to come up with a game idea and pitch it to my prof. and class. My game was about simulating the life of a teenager on social media, where players could develop friendship with their peers in-game. The core gameplay mechanic wasn't that complex because I focused heavily on the message my game is trying to deliver. I created a pitch document containing the story and programming of the game, which made me realize just how simple and barren my game actually was. There wasn't that many features that I could call "gameplay" asides from the main objective of creating friendships. This realization actually motivated me to add some more content where I can.
A part of me wishes that I wasn't restricted to creating a game that was related to my research topic. I had some really interesting ideas (at least I thought they were interesting) for games related to healthcare or ammortality, but I had trouble narrowing down the topic to a specific aspect.
Overall, this experience made me realize that the gamification process takes lots of thinking and design iterations. It's difficult for me to go straight from research to ideas to actual game design. I may have limited myself too hard on the message I was trying to deliver and my research topic, because some pitches from my class had a good balance of gameplay and message. I learned a lot about what is considered an effective pitch such as the selling points of a game and what the "investors" would be looking for before they give the green light.