[Week 8] Development Blog: HALVES AND FEEDBACK

On Monday, we presented our game for halves to showcase our progress throughout the semester. The presentation was great, and it went as we were expecting it to go. We went from the beginning of the concept of the Census, to the depth of our project. We also showcased our current prototype. We started off by giving an overview of our goals, objectives and approach. We explained our design choices, and showed some design inspirations. We also showed our art inspirations, the models we made and what color palette we will be following for the rest of our art. Then the programmers took over and showcased the demo while explaining how every component in our game was modular and was defined by some controllers. Eventually, I finished the presentation up as the producer and showed our further schedule and iteration process. We had also prepared for answers to potential questions, and we were asked some of them, so we felt confident answering. To some other questions, we understood what the audience was asking, and we answered them the best as we could.

On Tuesday, we took a day off to make up for the extra hours we spent for 1/2s preparations. Most of us still came to the ETC, but it felt nice to step a little away from the project and take inspiration from elements in other sources.

On Wednesday, we received our feedback for the presentation and our work. It was very helpful, in terms of design choices. And thus, the iterations began. We reversed back a little and started rethinking on our design. We gave ourselves some time to think. We talked to our faculty advisors, and decided to come back tomorrow with some ideas. We also talked to Jesse Schell who gave us some ideas that we can think about.

On Thursday, the major thing that we discussed and came to a conclusion was that people hate Paper Boy. It’s a frustrating game and diverts away from the idea of Census. And we needed something else. But then again, we wanted something that fits the idea of Census collection. We also figured that it would be better to create a linear experience rather than a turn based game, which would be much easier for our target audience to understand.

To conclude our final week, we hosted a few middle schoolers and high schoolers to show them our concept. They were very positive about it, and to our surprise, a lot of them did not know what the Census was about. Since we had an insight on how students reacted to our prototype, we talked to our client and told her that we are ready to playtest with our target audience now.