April 14 – 18, 2014
This was a week of big steps that ended with our most proud achievement: finally being able to prove that our audience likes our “golf meets MC Escher” game in two separate tests.
This week we finished the first pass at our third and final level and began setting it up to be playable. This was much later than we had planned, but we were able to produce it far more quickly than anything we had previously built, since we had finally begun to understand our pipeline. The level is weird, challenging, and a lot of fun to play.
For the first time we both implemented our game across the catalogue that will launch the rest of EA’s connected TV titles and added our own scorecard.. These small tasks helped us feel like we were making real progress towards our goal of having a game ready for a planned launch later this summer.
As we took these big strides, we also continued to take the small technical steps that will make our game a more polished, easier to play experience. We improved our preview system, which allows players to see where their shots will go by adding custom cameras that let them see wider shots. We improved the club selection process, eliminating yet one more unnecessary club and creating a system that defaults to players’ last club.
But our most exciting developments were a pair of playtests. The first was with one of our developers’ parents, who happened to be in town for the weekend. They were exactly our audience: people like casual games and who might like a game in their living room, but aren’t keen on buying a console. We watched as they sat together on the couch in one of Electronic Arts’ lounges, teaching each other how to play, hooting with each great shot, and gasping with each near miss. We were thrilled.
The next day we had a much broader playtest, as we invited our advisors, friends, mentors, and any stranger we could grab to join us for a “championship” of our first level. As players completed the course, we posted their names on a leaderboard.This both gave us some critical objective data, including how long it takes new players to complete one level, and essential subjective data, most importantly whether people thought our game was fun.
They did and we move into the week leading up to softs with renewed energy. We’ll spend the next few days implementing and finalizing our third and final level. We’ll dedicate our limited tech time to removing some the most egregious bugs and implementing “low hanging” features based on our playtests. Our artists will continue to work on original assets, including flags and tee-markers. These will help better define our surreal world and ready us to show of something truly beautiful next week.