![\"SurThrive-Edited\"](\"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/SurThrive-Edited-1024x576.png\")
<\/p>\nThe blog posts for week 4 and 5 coming together like this was somewhat by accident, but they actually relate quite well. \u00a0In week 4, we actually didn’t do much additional research, we were more focused on narrowing down our ideas for Quarters. \u00a0We figured by having one concrete idea to present instead of 2 or 3, we could get more direct, practical feedback on that one idea, rather than having the faculty simply helping us decide which to pick. \u00a0We actually were still going back and forth between two ideas — “Black and White Town” and “Pause” — the morning of Quarters presentations. \u00a0After meeting with our “clivisor” and discussing our\u00a0leanings on the two ideas, we finally bit the bullet and narrowed it down to one: “Pause”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Reactions to “Pause” were somewhat mixed. \u00a0Some faculty absolutely loved it, while others were puzzled, bordering on concerned. \u00a0They praised the unique and innovative concept, but had a hard time envisioning exactly how the gameplay would work. \u00a0We got a wide range of very helpful and insightful comments from the faculty. \u00a0To make sense of it all, we sat down as a team and went through the feedback we got, piece by piece, and decided what we wanted to address and what we felt was less relevant to our project. \u00a0For example, one suggestion\u00a0was that we could replace the video player\u00a0mechanic with a more generic time pause\/rewind mechanic. \u00a0While we felt this was a good suggestion from a gameplay point of view, it took us away from the media criticism angle we’ve been using. \u00a0On the other hand, several faculty brought up concerns that players\u00a0might be confused by the controls. \u00a0We believe this is a very good concern, and is something we will monitor closely in all our playtests.<\/p>\n
While we got some good\u00a0feedback from the Quarters walkarounds,\u00a0the extended feedback we got from the sitdowns on Friday was even better. \u00a0We\u00a0were especially fortunate in that the two faculty assigned to our sitdowns were Chris Klug and Dave Culyba — the two people most excited by and worried about our project, respectively.<\/p>\n
Chris\u00a0loved our plan for using non-linear and non-traditional storytelling. \u00a0He pointed us to the works of Italo Calvino, and\u00a0explained how powerful it can be to let the audience assemble the story for themselves. \u00a0He argued that we shouldn’t go out of our way to explain the\u00a0meaning of everything at the end, and in fact that could be detrimental as it might make the audience feel stupid for not figuring it out on their own. \u00a0Leaving it open, he explained, will keep them thinking about it long after the experience has ended.<\/p>\n
Dave\u00a0also gave us excellent feedback, mostly from a mechanics perspective. \u00a0He discussed strategies for getting people to change their beliefs, and explained how mechanics can be used to achieve that. \u00a0While he liked the video player interaction as a unique and novel\u00a0game idea, he didn’t seem entirely sold on how it related to our core message. \u00a0He explained that, for example, if you were making a game about how the media misinforms people, you might give the player an “unmask” tool, and teach them how to spot and unmask media bias. \u00a0He suggested we think about what we want the player to learn, and find a mechanic that fits that.<\/p>\n
Moving forward, we decided to take another piece of Chris’s advice and begin building. \u00a0His suggestion was to just start throwing together images and metaphors that we\u00a0think are impactful and see what works. \u00a0To that end, we began doing a new wave of research, looking for disaster stories that could make for powerful metaphors. \u00a0We compiled a list of 40 stories, and began thinking of ways we could represent them in terms of our gameplay and mechanics. \u00a0We also had a team viewing of the film\u00a0It’s Such a Beautiful Day, which our designer thought did a good job of telling the sort of metaphorical story we’re working on. \u00a0Our next steps are to begin designing some metaphors and getting them in front of people.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The blog posts for week 4 and 5 coming together like this was somewhat by accident, but they actually relate quite well. \u00a0In week 4, we actually didn’t do much additional research, we were more focused on narrowing down our ideas for Quarters. \u00a0We figured by having one concrete idea to present instead of 2 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions\/65"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}