Today was the deadline for our cohort to choose what games they want to work on and form teams. After a weekend of intrigue, the games have been chosen and teams are assembled. There are four games being prototyped right now. What are they? Read ON!
The teams/games are as follows:
Rover - an RTS game with some horde-controlling elements.
Vinyl - A synesthesia music game that shows the experience of making music play on a record from the view of the needle on a record player.
Impulse - A continuation on the game that I worked on as producer for at the end of last semester. The game is about physics based combat and platforming.
And finally...
Cellblock, my game idea - the one you know all about from previous posts.
Those are the games being worked on now, all of them really solid ideas.
Anywhoo, the first team meeting was done today for the Cellblock team, whose official team name is: Team Hack N' Hide. Our first meeting was actually quite short because we all wanted to get to work on the production on the game, and no, that does not mean code. Instead, we all mapped out how to physically prototype one of the most important aspects of the game and arguably the biggest concern given by the faculty - player communication. When I first came up with the idea for Cellblock, I thought of a game where players would be having their own experiences without knowing they were sharing objectives and actions with another player. However, the majority of people who heard about my game mechanics disagreed with this detail and told me that this was the type of game that they were really going to be playing with their significant other, sibling, or friend in the same room. Thus, is why we decided to immediately physically prototype this aspect within the confines of a game space.
How did we prototype? Firstly, we wanted to set up the most basic environment that the game would offer which would be one player "on the ground", sneaking past a patrolling guard while another player would be watching the his comrade's movements around the sole opposition. So, one of our team members (AJ "the Plow" Dimick) decided to take on the role of the guard and patrol around a room that had no cover besides three, very tall display cases. Vaibhav decided to assume the role of the first-person character who is trying to sneak past AJ undetected with Kiran playing the role of the Hacker - a person reporting to the other player from a laptop in a undisclosed location. Max served as the "camera" which means he was holding an ipad that was engaged in a Skype video call to Kiran's laptop. We placed Max in a certain location of the room, where he then rotated the camera left to right - allowing Kiran to see the room but with a limited view. For the tests, we made the objective simple. Start in a confined door, sneak past the security guard undetected, and reach the stairwell on the opposite side of the room.
We did three tests:
1) We gave Vaibhav and Kiran walkie-talkies which limits their communication one-way for a period of time. This caused Vaibhav to completely ignore Kiran as a resource and reached the other end of the room of his own accord. NOTE: Vaibhav cheated a little bit by peaking through the transparent windows of the display cases to see the guard.
2) We decided to have the two player uses a cellphone and allows for constant communication. We also instructed that Vaibhav could now get caught by AJ if he was spotted through the display cases. We also added another iPad holder and connected the laptop to both ipads via Google Hangout. Vaibhav succeeded in the objective, citing that he needed to rely on Kiran a lot more. Kiran thought that from his end, the challenge was far too easy with two cameras.
See the third playstest video here
3) Lastly, we decided to replay test 2 only with one ipad camera that Kiran could control by telling Max to rotate the camera left or right. Vaibhav, once again achieved his goal only this time he was feeling a great deal of suspense and tension. He did not know where AJ was a at all one time and told Kiran that he needs his help to get to the end goal. Kiran found it to be a great challenge in helping out as he was faced with the dilemma of following the guard or following Vaibhav with the camera.
Whew! Information overload but I feel this experience was not only great for discovering new aspects of our game but also for team building. We all really rallied behind this idea with these exercises.
...Now all we need to do is truly focus on balancing goals and reliance between the Hacker character and the Prisoner/Thief character. We also need a theme for this too!
Better get back to work!!!
-Andrew
See the third playstest video here
3) Lastly, we decided to replay test 2 only with one ipad camera that Kiran could control by telling Max to rotate the camera left or right. Vaibhav, once again achieved his goal only this time he was feeling a great deal of suspense and tension. He did not know where AJ was a at all one time and told Kiran that he needs his help to get to the end goal. Kiran found it to be a great challenge in helping out as he was faced with the dilemma of following the guard or following Vaibhav with the camera.
Whew! Information overload but I feel this experience was not only great for discovering new aspects of our game but also for team building. We all really rallied behind this idea with these exercises.
...Now all we need to do is truly focus on balancing goals and reliance between the Hacker character and the Prisoner/Thief character. We also need a theme for this too!
Better get back to work!!!
-Andrew
