In week 4 we had an another brainstorm session on Monday to generate some more ideas and to narrow out focus down to three more concrete ideas. We also met with Jesse Schell to see how he felt in general about our design goals and our game ideas. Overall much of the time spent this week was getting the team together to get our ideas in a more presentable state and preparing for Quarter walk-arounds.
In our Monday brainstorm session, we got together again to present our own individual ideas to each other and see how that could work out. We printed out our ideas and wrote what we thought for each idea on our bulletin board.
A mock up of a tower defense idea.
Our meeting with Jesse also provided some valuable feedback in how we should approach our project. Our game needed to be clear in its goals and how it would affect high schoolers. For example, high schoolers are already generally aware of what is considered “unsafe” on the web, so we should focus on things that are not as apparent, like how what you do online could potentially affect you (sometimes for the worst) in real life. Our game also needed something to connect it to the real world – if it’s too abstracted, then the context of online safety would be lost. Jesse also suggested some references that are able to connect well to the real life. Degrassi, for example, on Teen Nick is a teen drama that focuses on real life problems teens may face without trivializing them.
After meeting with Jesse and our advisors we took the time to clarify our ideas and our personal interests and to start narrowing down our ideas. Chris, Elodie, and Eleanor took the time to focus more on the story of the game while Dan, Orry and Bora focused more on the gameplay elements. We were also able to make use of the survey that was sent out to teenagers (~around 60 responses) about games, shows, and readings that they were interested in. After combining our ideas together we were able to write up design documents and create some mock-ups to get a better feel of what the game could be like. Eleanor also took the time to do some research into possible art styles for the game.
Some concept art of possible art styles.
A mock up of the detective game idea.
During the week Orry was also able to organize a meeting with the Elizabeth Forward School next Wedsnesday (2/13) so we can get more insight by talking to teenagers about our game ideas and goals for the game.