Self-approval

For those who might be looking for it, I should include a link to the Team's Blog:

http://teampriapus.blogspot.com/

Our presentations to the industry panel was pushed back another week, which I don't enjoy. I want to have a team meeting regarding organization and structure of the way that the team goes, and it doesn't make sense to do that twice in a row. Once the industry  panel cuts games from the list of games that will actually go forward, we may find ourselves with several more people on our team that will definitely need to be part of that meeting.

That reminds me: For this post, I'd like to talk about my feelings on being cut or going forward. I feel that our team has had the least amount of approval in terms of what the game is at this point. We're a 3D physics platformer where you're the character of a game thats trying to put his game back together, formal element by formal element. To be really honest, I feel as if the EPs (Roger and Bob mostly) have stopped fighting us just because we need to have a game to present.

Regardless of whether that's true or not we do need to have a game to present, so if my hypothesis is correct they're probably acting wisely. I dislike how that approach breaks the studio simulation, but this is an education first and a simulation second. Having a game they approve less of might be better than having a game that they're in love with...in March.

Whether or not their approval is coming our way, I feel that our game is exactly what it needed to be. It's exactly the intersection of almost every thing we were told needs to be in the game. That includes something that I didn't consider before: personal passion. The game now involves education about games in general, and the educational value of games is something that I've been passionate about even before I came to the EAE program. Our game is fun, in-scope, unique, student-y, and impressive.

One thing is for certain: I'm confident that our game is excellent, and I can go into the presentation a week from today feeling extremely confident that our game will be picked.

Education in Creativity

I'd like to spend some time reflecting a bit on the history of the game pitches that we've had and how we've got to the point where we are, because I've learned an incredible amount. I feel that our team is in the unique position of building a game off of a proven, fun mechanic instead of an idea. While other teams have been struggling to make the implementation of their interesting idea fun, our team has been struggling to make the idea of our fun mechanics interesting.

This is not what I expected to learn, but it's exactly what I needed to learn.

I spent time talking about the current iteration of the game pitch today with Zac (who has a brand new baby as of this evening--grats!) who told me that they're focusing on making their game into something that's both rewarding and fun for both people playing. I feel that my strengths are in tuning a certain game to be fun, and with a solid idea behind me I could turn even a game about Thermodynamics with mandatory calculation into something that would be fun to play.

Aside: STEAMship WAS awesome. I was genuinely happy with the final iteration of that game.

Back to my conversation with Zac: I expressed to him that I would much rather be in his position, because I feel like I've been put in the one situation that I was completely unprepared for. I told him that this entire experience of making a thesis or an idea around this game has been amazingly frustrating akin to a poor game of 20 questions, where the script would go something like:

Roger: This game doesn't have a solid hook, nobody will care about this game.
Jake: We've thought about a topic that we think is interesting enough to make a game around.
Roger: That topic has nothing to do with your mechanics.
Jake: We've come up with a way to incorporate our topic into our game
Roger: You don't really care about that topic, get something that you're really behind.
Jake: We've come up with an idea that we're all passionate about.
Roger: That idea isn't a game, it doesn't sound fun.
Jake: We've found a way to make this new idea fun.
Roger: That game doesn't have a solid hook.
Jake: We've not slept trying to think of a game that could possibly fill every requirement given to us on this, and have come up with an idea that we think will work.
Roger: You're thinking too hard about this.

Really, it feels like I've spent the last 4 years as an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering being trained to think a certain way and I've been trying to undo it all in the last 4 weeks. Thinking a completely different way is amazing, educational, and rewarding--but incredibly difficult nonetheless. I didn't think you could learn how to be creative, but I think that this program is as close as I can get to an education in creativity.