We just finished with the 3rd week of our project, and we are in a pretty good place at this stage in our project. This week we finalized the game idea we want to work on.

We started with the motivation behind the project to help people explore Pittsburgh and build a great community around the culture and festivals of Pittsburgh. The next process was to figure out user experience and develop personas to create a game mechanic for our game.

We came up with two major categories for Target Audience :

1.) People new to Pittsburgh : A person new to Pittsburgh, initially would be interested in visiting the tourist attractions in Pittsburgh. They would also like to make new friends and have new experiences in the city. And once they get familiar with the city they would also be interested in the culture and traditions in Pittsburgh.

2.) Pittsburgh Native : A person who has lived in Pittsburgh for a long time and knows a lot about Pittsburgh, would like to visit some of the hidden interesting locations in Pittsburgh. They would take part in the sharing and celebrating the festivals and the culture of Pittsburgh.

Then we also compiled a list of interesting places and important festivals celebrated in Pittsburgh.

Finally, we came up with a cool game dynamic in which a character which is signature of Pittsburgh will accompany the players in all their missions and give them information about the places they visit and the experiences they have.
Potential characters include : A Steel Mill worker, The Ghost of Andrew Carnegie, The Scotty Dog and a Steelers Fan.
The missions would consists of checking in at a location or an event, scavenger hunt for locations to take pictures similar to the pictures provided to our players, group conquering of a location in such a way that 5 or more people
need to check in at a location within a day to conquer that location.

Some of the example missions that we thought of are :
-Go take a Ducky Tour
-Go to Mattress Factory and and take a picture in front of the mirrors
-Go to Primantis and have a burger with French fries in it.
-Go to top of Cathedral of Learning building and take a picture of Pittsburgh skyline.
-Explore 10 bridges in Pittsburgh to become a Bridge Master

This weekend our team also went on a Team Adventure to experience Pittsburgh. We went on a Ducky Tour and it was quite an adventure. Our team came to know about some of the interesting places in Downtown and the history behind them. It was definitely motivational for the team to go out and research about Pittsburgh, thanks to our advisor Shirley for suggesting that.