After setting up the roles and getting early pre-production done in the first week, Week 2 began on Monday, with the team doing further research on how reading games are implemented and best practices to carry out in order to make a game suited for children in the age range of 7-9. The team also took the games which were deemed “useful” during research and played them to search for useful features, interactions, themes, art styles and other tid-bits. Having finished the research, the team sat for an official brainstorming session with 15 game ideas put forth and ideating and combining the best of all to come up with a final vision for the team to follow. The team also utilized Jesse Schell’s deck for guidance with the gamification’s core elemental tetrad of Aesthetic, Story, Technology and Mechanics coming very handy. The team also individually filled the self-evaluations and sent it our mentor, Shirley Saldamarco.
On Tuesday, the team continued with further ideation and brainstorming and coming up with three solid ideas to take into consideration as the game to be made for the semester. The team met with Jesse Schell with the problem statement and the three mock ideas with his input coming in very handy. Jesse stated that we should first build the toy and then carry forward with it, with the core objective being to make the game fun and immersive and then to fold in reading later. The team also sat down and set-up formal roles by filling in the RACI chart with each member being the Responsible, Accountable, Consultant and Informed for each task.
Wednesday was a comparatively less productive day with the highlight being that the team honed in on the single idea they were all excited to work with. The high-level details were discussed and voted on with the game should be fun and practical to develop being taken into consideration. The afternoon and evening were spent filling the forms and registering fingerprints for background clearances so the team members could interact with children.
On Thursday, the team came in early in order to cover up for lost ground on the previous day. The team storyboarded the entire game with various features, mechanics and interactions discussed and finalized. The team also developed a paper prototype with many iterations and rules added to make the game challenging but also fun and engaging. The team also prepared for playtesting this paper prototype with the students of Colonial School and highlighted their fears, doubts and questions on how it will be received. The programmers and designers also met up and made a basic requirements list and prepared a basic art assets list for the artists to work on.
On Friday, the team started a primitive version of scrum with each person writing down the first tasks to be performed in the development cycle and the first official sprint of the semester. The designers met and discussed on how a basic version of the prototype to be developed should look and sample outlines of how the grid should look was designed. The design team also finalized that the game will have a hexagonal grid system for movement. The team also had a team building dinner with Elaine hosting an awesome feast.