Post 19 - Synergy

We have done it.

We were able to cull 100 great game ideas down to five!

We first developed 100 great game ideas last week. This process was pitched to our teams as an idea of coming up with candidates for the upcoming IGF competition. We had game ideas change, morph, mix together, and thrown in the garbage.

We quickly learned that we had to ban together to form our idea into a group effort, rather than have one person pitch their game idea. The mixing of mechanics, emotions, visuals, and edgy ideas allowed us to come up with games that would fit into the form that works for IGF games.

Then, we had to kill off many of these ideas. We had to separate our ideas down to five total. We first separated it down to 32. Then down to 20. Then 15. Then 6.

This is where I believe our team had troubles. We had to deal with a major time constraint in the day, as well as with our idea being fairly discussed. We finally removed the Portal Tower Defense game. I am concerned that some of our team is very hurt over the loss of this game. We will make it through, but it is going to make sure we can keep everything fresh, fun, and not personal.

The five games we narrowed it down to were:

Game Idea                               Title
Outcast Game -                    "Ousted Outcast"
Physics/Blink Game -          "Blink"
Grinding Game -                  "The Grind"
Garbage Game -                   "Wasteland"
Sight Game -                        "Out of Sight Out of Mind"

These previous games all dealt with an interesting game mechanic, or emotional idea. We decided that the person who had the original game idea should give the pitch, or at least head the game document creation. We had to agree on this quickly, and lacked good communication via Facebook, as was decided initially.

I honestly felt like I received useful feedback from maybe three team members, but only received actual help on the document from two people. This was stressful, and I let everyone know that I didn't appreciate it.

Aside from this, I believe our pitches for our games were good. Some felt more prepared than others. My idea was off the cuff, but it felt like a good pitch idea. It allowed the audience to view the game in their mind.

I received great feedback from Roger Altizer and Jose Zagal regarding my pitch, as well as the groups' pitches as well. We need to have our pitches feel like a team creation and collaboration, rather than a single person's idea being pitched. I am going to discuss this with the full team on Tuesday (1-21-2014) of next week.

I am not discussing other groups' ideas, because I cannot remember all of them. I will discuss them further when we move farther into the semester.

I know I learned a lot, and I look forward to the coming weeks. Let's do it.