Week 4 is currently the most important week for us. We finalized our design idea based on the research and interview from the previous three weeks, and reached our milestone.
On Monday, we pitched 8 game ideas to our client Melanie. She was very excited with all of them and picked top 3 ideas that she likes best, with reasons as well. She likes game ideas that simulate reality, and ideas that have more game elements.
After the meeting, our team had a major conflict regarding the game design ideas. Me, as the producer, try to keep the game on track, make is as realistic as possible so that it doesn’t lose the educational property. Some other group members thought that the priority of the game is fun, otherwise there is no reason for the game to exist. But our project is in a very constrained space. If the game departs from reality too much, it will not correlate to reality, thus missing the chance for players to realize the flaws in their real life BC plan. If we want the game to be fun, it has to depart from reality a little bit, otherwise it can’t be fun at all.
Until Thursday, something magical poped up our mind. Very quickly, we made a table top prototype and test played the idea together. And we felt it’s a lot of fun while totally simulating the reality. After the play test, we all agreed that this is the game we are going to make.
The idea is a RPG simulation game. Every player is role playing him/herself. Each player has different attributes/perks. Some people is good at communication, some people is good at execution, and some people has good computer skills.
During the gameplay, everyone play as a team to solve a disaster situation. Every action players make takes time. If the player taking the action is good at the thing he is doing, it will take less time, and have a higher chance of success. So everyone need to team up, distribute the works, and fight with time. It’s basically a D&D game, but with everything translated into Business Continuity execution.
We told our new game idea to Melanie, and she loves it. Our instructor Dave and Ricardo both think the idea got lots of potential.
Based on our current findings, Dave concluded 3 design pillars for us:
- Communication is the heart of everything.
The exercise is about communication. So communication will be the center of our game. - One foot in fantasy, one foot in reality.
The game put the players into a fantasy world, while keeping them in reality. - Don’t break things.
Don’t lose the educational property of the exercise.
From next week onward, we will start making our digital prototype, while refining our game design.