Games first, story second.

I talked with Roger yesterday about some frustrations that I've been having with the game that we're designing, and after a good night's sleep, I think that I've really figured out what kinds of things need to be done.

For those of you that are not Jake Muehle, I was frustrated that Roger would consistently comment that the game was not focused enough, too broad, or he didn't care about some of the thematic elements that we picked--namely, bullying. Every time Roger talked (and disapproved) of what we had come up with, I felt as if the game got less game-like and more towards this nebulous "edginess" that Roger seemed to want out of a student game.

On a trip over to the MEB, I expressed these exact frustrations, and Roger gave some great tips on what we needed to do. We've been trying to make our game "student-y" through the thematic wrapper, where our game is not actually a game yet. Our game was based on the concept of "pushing stuff around is fun", but then we tried to make a game out of it by adding a story. Roger suggested that we give the story a break and think up pure games that would be fun given our entertaining mechanic.

After sleeping on it, this advice seems so obvious I feel like an idiot. This is why I came to EAE, THIS is why I switched to being a producer--I'm great at making games. I got so caught up in the seemingly required edginess that I didn't even stop to think about what the most important part of games were--making them a game. Story follows behind making the game fun. I can't believe I didn't come to this on my own.

One other thing that's been surprising to me is how effective the "late mark" system is. It's just a bunch of tally marks on a sticky note on people's computers, but everyone seems to try *really* hard to be on time to avoid them. That might be because people are so devastated to receive them, as I've been making a habit of giving out late marks no matter how awesome the excuse--if you're late, you're late. Another tip-of-the-hat to mission organization theory--if you record your progress, people perform better.