Overview

This week focused on further defining our game idea for the presentation on Thursday, while working in parallel on programming the infrastructure for connecting the controllers and investigating implementation approaches.

On Thursday, Christian and Etaba presented the team’s idea to 4 members of the OCCO including Richard Hilleman, EA’s Chief Creative Officer.  The game we pitched is Alo, a cooperative puzzle-platformer in which 4 players work together to control the game’s gelatinous namesake, who is an interactive physics toy.

The client approved the idea, and gave us some very helpful advice and constructive criticism:  We should adjust from a side scrolling view to a top down view, and explore the play field to find what is the most fun context for this toy.  Also, we should start with the simplest possible input and objectives (e.g. swipe, trying to reach a hole on screen), but think about giving the player multiple clear ways to reach that objective and let the group decide for themselves which to try.

Production

Production responsibilities heated up this week as it was necessary to coordinate across the team as a whole to ensure not only that we finished everything we needed to for the presentation, but also that each teammate was being utilized and had tasks they could work on to contribute to the project’s beginning stages.

Goksu communicated with the OCCO contacts and East Coast producers to establish a meeting time for the presentation.  Christian coordinated within the team to assign tasks, and both producers participated in online producer meetings towards the end of the week to try and make sure that both teams had a shared understanding of the project’s current status.  These meetings also helped each team to understand what the other had taken away from the idea presentation to the OCCO.

Design

The designers spent the beginning of this week brainstorming and developing structured approaches to the ‘Monster Body’ premise.  Then, they met and discussed each idea, and what approach should they move forward with.  Once the format of 4 players controlling a gelatinous physics toy was established, the designers divided the tasks for outlining the idea in detail and set about creating the presentation. They also communicated the idea to the rest of the teammates and made sure the idea was clear.  As the presentation neared, they collaborated with the artists to introduce art style and concept art to the pitch.  Finally, at 10:00 pm PST the night before the pitch last minute tweaks were made to some unclear mechanics.