Archive for March, 2013

Newsletter 9: Halves

Newsletter for project Heidegger Week 9 in PDF Format

Week Overview

This week was defined and singularly devoted to preparation for our Halves presentation, which was unexpectedly rescheduled from Wednesday the 20th to Friday the 22nd due to the resignation of EA’s CEO and the abundance of company-wide meetings that followed. (Incidentally, how very surreal that we were present and working on the executive floor for this episode of corporate politics!) Thankfully, we were able to optimize our presentation with the additional days, and we succeeded in concentrating the complexities of our project into an audience-friendly and approachable review of our progress thus far.

Heidegger half presentation

Heidegger half presentation

In Detail

Since last week was our Spring Break, and because no newsletter was produced, it’s first important to note that we conducted one round of playtesting then, and also began the assembly of our Halves presentation. Although we’d created a rough PowerPoint outline during Spring Break, we decided to each create our presentation slides individually for Halves, due to the fact that Shaveen, our resident PowerPoint god (and the party responsible for executing our Quarters slides so splendidly), was attending a conference for most of this week and therefore unavailable. On Monday, the tactical error of this choice was made evident, as it proved difficult to achieve the aesthetic cohesion of our past presentation and realize the quality standard we hoped to meet. Thankfully, Jiyoung and Carl provided us with their reliably useful feedback on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday during our team rehearsals with them, and on Thursday–at last–we triumphantly attained visual fluidity. Because the road to that point was arduous, the accomplishment of this rather mundane goal became meaningful. In addition to our PowerPoint presentation, we also created supplementary materials to be displayed at an exhibition table following Halves. Martin and Vera edited a “highlight” reel of a few of our playtesting sessions so that attendees could receive a concrete idea of our process and findings, Star made a posterboard display of our level design and our data collection process, and Emmanuel and Anabelle built an interactive demo of our Origin module. Though attendance at our Halves presentation was impacted by its rescheduling, the audience was still healthy, and we were pleased that a fair number of familiar faces from the OCCO generously took time out of their day to support us: if any of you read this, your encouragement was tremendously appreciated, and we thank you! Concerning the organization of our presentation, Nathan introduced the team and to the project; Martin explained our playtesting process; Star and Vera covered our data progress; Anabelle detailed the development of our Origin module; and Emmanuel discussed our challenges, metrics of success, and milestones. Shaveen also rejoined us, and we were thankful for his presence once more. The delivery of our presentation was catastrophe-free, and we received questions from the audience about the possible future implementation of our process, and about our current usage of Origin. Following Halves, Ben approached and congratulated us on our performance: this was, undoubtedly, the highlight of the day, and the week.

Next Week

Shortly before the composition of this newsletter, we received word from Blade that his initial implementation of our custom level is complete: this is exciting, indeed! Though next week is GDC, and the majority of our Heidegger work will halt due to our commitments there, we’ll be incorporating our fresh custom level into all further playtests.

Newsletter 8: Crysis

Newsletter for project Heidegger Week 8 in PDF Format

This Week

We expected Week 8 to be a productive-yet-uneventful, but, because every week holds surprises (that truth is indeed the dominant constant of ETC life!), the fact that some shifts in the direction of our project unexpectedly manifested was not altogether startling. Regardless, we pressed on within our mini-teams and continued to progress toward our persistent goal of establishing a fixed and efficient system of data collection and processing.

Preparing halves presentations

Heidegger Halves presentation conceptualization

In Detail

This week’s most significant news was that, on Tuesday, Ben informed us that the role of the custom Dead Space 3 level we’ve been planning on using as the basis of our user testing once Blade implemented our designs will likely be significantly diminished. Instead of using it as a focus of our testing, Ben suggests that we should test the majority of our users with existing Dead Space 3 levels, then have some testers in later sessions play our level, additionally. The rationale behind this thought is that Visceral Games, Dead Space 3’s developer, will be able to use our findings more practically if they stem from the release version of their product rather than a level specific and limited to our experimental effort. Our level might still prove useful to them, however, as we’ll now have the opportunity to share with members of their studio how testers respond to the segments of it designed to stimulate specific player type. Perhaps said information will prove enlightening, and perhaps not, but Ben’s other divulgence was that we’ll now be presenting the fruits of our research to Visceral Games at the end of the semester. We’re all thrilled at the opportunity, and sincerely hope that our work can positively influence future development there in even some modest way! The team’s still discussing and processing the implications of this recent information on our Halves presentation and the project entire, but we’re confident that Ben will assist and guide us to the best of his ability. Concerning more planned-for tasks, our Level and User Testing team executed their first official round of tests this week, and utilized a mixture of players from the public, fellow CMU ETC students, and EA employees. The results, as always, were compelling and revealing, and Martin and Nathan continue to refine the process of data-gathering. On the Data Team, meanwhile, Star sustained his exploration into correlation algorithms, and, with Emmanuel’s help, installed Mahout, Hadoop, and Unix. Shaveen and Vera further collaborated on database construction and refinement, while, respectively, Shaveen sought to better understand how to generate and gather Xbox 360 telemetry data and Vera began editing and processing the behavioral data videos gathered during user testing. Finally, Anabelle and Emmanuel, the Origin Team, presented their lovely and thoughtful recommendation system concepts to the rest of the full team, and to Ben. Individually, Anabelle’s been ensuring the graphical fidelity of our mock-up and its cohesion with Origin’s branding standards, while Emmanuel’s been building the functional HTML core atop which the graphics will be grafted.

Next Week

Though next week is technically Spring Break, we plan to conduct Round 2 of our user tests and make as much headway as possible on both Data and Origin fronts. The week after next is (already!) Halves, and we plan to incrementally build and polish our presentation so that we can begin rehearsals.

Newsletter 7: Mass Effect

Newsletter for project Heidegger Week 7 in PDF format 

Week Overview

This week marked our final push of preparation before we ease (hopefully!) into our routine of data collection, data processing, and Origin module construction. Noteworthy events were our second round of individual meetings with Jiyoung and Carl, our dear Silicon Valley faculty, and our first user testing session involving the majority of our equipment and living, breathing, human participants.

Week 7 newsletter photo

A rare moment of cross-team discourse.

In Detail

We were fortunate enough this week to have had more consistently unbroken time than in recent weeks to devote to our project, and we utilized it by pursuing the goals of our mini-teams. Martin and Nathan, the Level Design and User Testing Team, worked to clear the debris from and untangle the kudzu of wires in the RAM Room (it’s named after a specific testing methodology, according to Ben — though, mysteriously, he couldn’t name it), where our tests will take place. Fixing the prohibitive technical issues of the room, such as our inability to establish a network connection and the fact that one of the two necessary TVs in room didn’t function and had to be replaced, took many an hour and much coordination with Ben, who is infinitely patient and responsive to our travails. On Friday, six of our ETC Silicon Valley peers were gracious enough with their time to participate in our final phase of preliminary testing. We were able to not only smooth out the final impediments in our testing procedure and equipment calibration, but we also succeeded in collecting our first batch of analyzable data—a major milestone! The Data Team, meanwhile was equally busy: Shaveen was able, at long last (and after much conversation with various EA tech-contacts), to directly interface Xbox telemetry data from his PC, a significant accomplishment that will allow us to pull recorded data from the development-model Xboxes hosting Dead Space 3 for our user tests. Shaveen and Vera collaborating on the creation of SQL forms and databases for the cataloging and storage of collected data, and Star spent the week researching primary and secondary algorithms we can use in coming weeks for the critical step of data correlation. Regarding our Origin module, Anabelle and Emmanuel conferred on Monday and decided on three exploratory recommendation concepts, which they’ll further develop and share with the full team next week. Additionally, Emmanuel has, using the Origin branding conventions as a touchstone, been painstakingly creating an interactive facsimile of the browser-based Origin service. This way, our recommendation system, once finalized, can be implemented into this mock-up and evaluated by our client in a virtual setting both pertinent and meaningful.

Next Week

Looking ahead, next week will bring our first official round of user testing, the establishment of our data pipeline, and further progress in the development of our recommendation system. After a lengthy gestation period, it’s stirring to witness our mini-teams thrive and the actualization of our long-held plans!