This week we headed out to New York to make our final calibrations and have the game be played live at the Games for Change Festival.
We arrived in New York on Monday, before the Festival began, to test our final build and calibrate to Washington Square Park. We spent a lot of time in the NYU library to put the finishing touches on our game. Janet, Lisa, and Tim took this time to boost our social media and try to create some buzz about our game before Thursday. The Festival began on Tuesday, and we continued to test and make sure that everything was in its place. We got to attend a few of the talks at the conference and meet some really interesting people. We spent some of the time at the festival meeting people and trying to recruit players for our game on Thursday. Wednesday we attended the Come Out and Play games, which also focus on outdoor games. Despite the wind, we had a lot of fun playing those games and meeting other outdoor game developers. Jesse and Drew made special announcements during their talks to promote our game, for which we are eternally grateful. Wednesday night, we made sure to go to bed early so that we could get up early and be ready for our game’s debut.
On Thursday morning we woke up bright and early and arrived at Washington Square Park at 8:30. It was a clear day, albeit a little chilly, but we were confident that the game would be successful. With our brightly colored balloons, we were prepared for the players to join us in the park. Though we did not have over 200 players, we did average about 15 players per session, which ended up being around 60 players overall. The players seemed excited about our game and were eager to give us feedback at the end. Here is a video from the game being played in Washington Square Park:
On Friday we came back to Pittsburgh and took the weekend off. Next week, we plan to assess the results from the festival and prepare that information to be used in our final presentation.