{"id":307,"date":"2013-04-05T00:06:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T00:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/?p=307"},"modified":"2013-04-16T00:10:41","modified_gmt":"2013-04-16T00:10:41","slug":"week-10-fixing-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/?p=307","title":{"rendered":"Week 10: Fixing the Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>The Week in Review<\/h1>\n<p>As most of our team returned from a week in\u00a0California at the Game Developer\u2019s Conference<br \/>\n(GDC), we found ourselves working hard\u00a0to prepare our interactive storytelling exhibit<br \/>\nfor our first full playtest (scheduled for this\u00a0Sunday at the Carnegie Science Center).<\/p>\n<p>Part of this meant performing a little triage.\u00a0GDC had taken it\u2019s toll on our team: team\u00a0members were sick, injured, and delayed in\u00a0traveling, which meant lost work hours. Considering\u00a0this, we decided to cut back on the\u00a0number of assets in our experience: where\u00a0we had originally planned to have nine options\u00a0at every choice point (for example, where the<br \/>\nstory occurs and who the villain is), we chose<br \/>\nto have only our six best options.<\/p>\n<p>These cuts let our artist and animator finish\u00a0the remaining content in time for our programmers<br \/>\nto add them into the system. By\u00a0the week\u2019s end, for the first time we had a version<br \/>\nof the build that was \u201ccontent complete.\u201d\u00a0While there is more refining work to be done,<br \/>\nwe would be able to present kids with a fairly\u00a0complete version of the experience.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, we faced story challenges.\u00a0After having seen a digital version of the experience<br \/>\nin its entirety for the first time before\u00a0we left for GDC, our clients, the San Antonio<br \/>\nChildren\u2019s Museum and Argyle Design, told us\u00a0the experience, which we\u2019ve tentatively titled<br \/>\n\u201cMy Hero Journey\u201d didn\u2019t feel \u201cheroic\u201d enough.\u00a0With less three weeks to go before our soft<br \/>\nopening and a lot of work still ahead of us, we\u00a0knew we didn\u2019t have the resources to make big<br \/>\nchanges.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, we were able brainstorm with our client and find a fix that was doable. Rather than have the story be about going on a quest for something the Hero \u201creally, really wanted\u201d, we decided to make the story be about going on a quest for a \u201ctreasure\u201d which had gone missing from the Hero\u2019s town. We also added a few lines of moral lesson at the end of the story. Thesewere Goldilocks changes\u2014big enough to make a difference, but small enough to be doable in our timeframe and with our resources.<\/p>\n<p>All of this, puts us in a great position to playtest this weekend.<\/p>\n<h1>We Suggest<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li>Launchpad Toys Toonstastic is just the sort of thing we wish we had found at the beginning of the semester. Designed to inspire kids to become storytellers, this app works sort of like a digital puppet show. Kids create a story with a library of characters and settings and then animate them in a story structured around a traditional story arc. (http:\/\/launchpadtoys.com\/toontastic\/)<\/li>\n<li>Similarly, MonkeyGram lets users create animated postcards in place of texting. Check it out (http:\/\/launchpadtoys.com\/monkeygram\/)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1>The Week Ahead<\/h1>\n<p>We can\u2019t wait to finally get our experience\u00a0in front of kids this weekend. Over the next\u00a0week, we expect to be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Making improvements based on kids\u2019 feedback.<\/li>\n<li>Refining the user interface.<\/li>\n<li>Recording audio with two actors.<\/li>\n<li>Finalizing a physical build of the kiosk with Ben Carter on main campus and designing a vinyl wrapping, which will give it color.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h1><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Week in Review As most of our team returned from a week in\u00a0California at the Game Developer\u2019s Conference (GDC), we found ourselves working hard\u00a0to prepare our interactive storytelling exhibit for our first full playtest (scheduled for this\u00a0Sunday at the Carnegie Science Center). Part of this meant performing a little triage.\u00a0GDC had taken it\u2019s toll [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":314,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions\/314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/dotdotdot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}