02 October 2012

Course Correction -- Week Ending 29 Sep

In the moment of critique or correction, I imagine that many people feel a bit defensive, perhaps thinking that the critic just doesn't understand the intent behind the action or product. I know that I have certainly felt that way on many such occasions, and this past week provided me a few more opportunities to choose how I reacted to critiques of my work.

It is in those instances that I have learned (even if it's still difficult) to consider such critiques as course corrections rather than personal attacks, especially when they come from someone more experienced and who honestly has your well-being (and the success of your product) in mind. Take Wednesday for example. After we presented the current build of Last March of the Dodos to faculty and other students, Roger Altizer came over to personally try out our game. Game-freezing bugs aside (rar), he honestly had concerns with the meta game design (or lack thereof). Thankfully, we were able to consider his thoughts and suggestions and come up with a solution that we feel will be a great addition to the game with what limited time we have left.

As designer, I was able to seriously analyze how the various core mechanics of our game work together to lead the player to the most satisfying possible experience. As it stood, the collection of "doins" (our in-game score/currency) appeared to be the end goal, since there was nothing on which to spend millions of eventually banked doins. We had previously assumed that it would be akin to earning high scores and reaching for the top of the leaderboards, but it turned out that simply trying to earn doins to spend frivolously on traps here and there distracted from the core concept of the game. In other words, the mechanics seemed to push earning doins over the real hook of the game: destroying tons of dodos in fantastic ways.

My solution (eventually approved by the group) was to make each new level a money sink that has to be purchased. These new levels promise new, fun ways to terminate Dodos, with more and more masses of the birds available on each level. Finally, the ultimate goal is to buy passage to the secret (and ridiculously expensive) Dodo haven island. This final level has scores more Dodos to kill and is laid out like a Dodo hunting playground, providing a space for the player to go crazy with fowl-slaughtering imagination. With these changes, we feel that the collection of money reinforces the concept of the game rather than distracting from it. The player will want to earn money not just to earn more money, but to eventually be able to buy the most possible fun the game has to offer (which, when beaten, will result in the games ultimate win state).

We deliberated a number of solutions over the weekend, and we feel that this is our best solution, especially given our remaining time of only four weeks. It feels good to have been able to take constructive suggestions, give them real thought, and put forth a solution that we honestly feel is possible to accomplish.

Here's what I did this week:

- More level creation, including designing, drawing, and putting the whitebox models into Unity for playtesting
- Helped prepare the presentation of the game with Jesse (our team lead)
- Organized the final design meeting to decide which new changes and features we want to (and have reasonable time to) implement in order to ensure that our game ends up the best it can be for our IGF submission

And on that note, I've got my work cut out for me for this final month. Keep checking back, and I'll let you know how our last leg shapes up!

- Troy

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