We are through with week 1 of 14!
So far, some accomplishments have included: determining roles for each team member, familiarizing ourselves with specific issues the game industry has been dealing with lately, and figuring out team communication.
After meeting with our faculty advisors, Heather Kelley and Dave Culyba, we knew a lot more about the project.
- We will be seeking to change students going into the game industry – meaning we are actually very similar to our target audience!
- We want to raise awareness about issues in the game industry
- Students participating as our users likely wish to get more preparation for going into the game industry – so the game industry will be our specific focus
- This is NOT intended to be an employee simulator
- High school aged individuals may also benefit from what we create, but we are specifically targeting college-aged students
It is important to note that this project was inspired by the Survive and Thrive project that we will be hearing more about in the coming weeks. There will be a panel and workshop to address Preparing future employees for their first year in a game industry job.
We are looking at games like Prism (a 2D puzzle game) and Mocking Birds (interactive that addresses microaggressions). We are familiarizing ourselves with the Transformational Framework, because that is the pedagogy we are following in order to create a persistent change in our players. We are also doing individual research to establish what are the known and most potent issues in the game industry that we’d like to tackle.
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This first week, I was mainly confused as to what exactly we want to do first. The idea of changing an industry sounds inspiring, but unrealistic. However I am starting to see that the point of this project is to shoot for what you can do and to leave those notions behind. At the end of the day, what we do make as a team will do more for the industry than if we don’t try at all. In this first week, I read through the Transformational Network and started to ask myself the questions needed to help define these pillars. I also started to look into the connections I do have within the industry as a means to start compiling a list of references for later. – Brendan