{"id":59,"date":"2014-10-06T16:54:37","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T16:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/?p=59"},"modified":"2014-10-06T16:54:37","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T16:54:37","slug":"oregon-trail-neifletter-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/?p=59","title":{"rendered":"Oregon Trail: NEIFLetter #5"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On Wednesday, DAM got to spend an hour with a hero of ours: Don Rawitsch. \u00a0Don is the creator of\u00a0The Oregon Trail,\u00a0<\/em>one of the very first educational games and one which David and I (Mac) spent countless hours playing during school hours. \u00a0There were so many fascinating elements to The Oregon Trail from it’s economic systems to it’s exceedingly high difficulty level that sustained students interest for so many hours. \u00a0Death from dysentery and other diseases was always\u00a0one of the most memorable parts of the game. Hardcore fans still sport “you have died of dysentery” t-shirts in tribute to the classic game. \u00a0The darkness of deaths throughout the game was balanced with an interesting moral aspect; you had the option to hold a funeral for departed party members, but if you didn’t hold a funeral, then your party would experience a sharp drop in morale.<\/p>\n

Don sat down and played both our original Game Jam prototype and our current build while giving us a variety of incredible feedback to aid in our development. \u00a0\u00a0We also swapped stories from the genesis of\u00a0The Oregon Trail\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Not Everything is Flammable. \u00a0<\/em>We found a lot of shared similarities between the two game’s creation, including a lot of the most successful aspects of the game coming down to chance elements that weren’t necessarily planned. \u00a0Both of our teams were also pleasantly surprised at the long lines that emerged from our initial prototypes.<\/p>\n

This past week we also had hour sessions with\u00a0Harley\u00a0Baldwin White-Wiedow (the VP of design at Schell Games) and\u00a0Ellen Einarsen from Rovio. \u00a0One of the best parts of studying at the ETC is that at any given moment you can usually find some new extremely intelligent and experienced guests wandering through the facility. \u00a0Both Harley and Ellen gave very unique and detailed feedback of how we can improve our game and what we should be focusing on.<\/p>\n

One of the really big challenges for\u00a0DAM\u00a0this semester is how do we simultaneously preserve the elements that were successful in our original prototype while expanding the world and the game’s mechanics. \u00a0This is part of the reason why we like to run guests and playtesters through both versions of the game to make sure that we are maintaining and enhancing the game, rather than losing important aspects as we transition to the new version of the game. \u00a0Ellen and Harley both echoed similar sentiments about important components of NEIF like the feedback about how much fuel\/flames you have left at any given moment, importance of input controls, and the game’s contemplative puzzle mechanics. \u00a0We are still fine tuning that element currently, but still nice to see what\u00a0they felt\u00a0should be prioritized in the game’s development.<\/p>\n

Our goal this sprint has been getting a playable prototype to put in front of playtesters ASAP, so if you have any interest in playtesting for us please email us at djmaculate@gmail.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  On Wednesday, DAM got to spend an hour with a hero of ours: Don Rawitsch. \u00a0Don is the creator of\u00a0The Oregon Trail,\u00a0one of the very first educational games and one which David and I (Mac) spent countless hours playing during school hours. \u00a0There were so many fascinating elements to The Oregon Trail from it’s economic systems to it’s exceedingly high difficulty level that sustained students interest for so many.. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dam\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}