{"id":75,"date":"2016-04-08T21:07:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T21:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/?p=75"},"modified":"2016-04-08T21:07:24","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T21:07:24","slug":"producer-reflection-week-9-and-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/2016\/04\/08\/producer-reflection-week-9-and-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Producer Reflection – Week 9 and 10"},"content":{"rendered":"

Week 9 was rather\u00a0uneventful, given that the majority of our team was away at SXSW and GDC. \u00a0Those that remained at the ETC continued working on adding additional gameplay features and finalized\u00a0our build for Halves. \u00a0Fortunately, we had finished the majority of the presentation before we broke for Spring Break, so we were ready to hit the ground running when we got back. \u00a0In terms of our presentation, there were a few key areas we wanted to focus on. \u00a0First, we wanted to make sure we explained the goals of the project, as it is a somewhat unusual mix of exploration and delivery. \u00a0Second, we felt the research and brainstorming\u00a0process we\u00a0went through\u00a0was important, as not only did it lead to our current idea, it was also an important part\u00a0of what our client wanted to study. \u00a0Third, we also felt it was important to show our game, as it’s a very hard concept to describe. \u00a0Finally we wanted to discuss our plans for playtesting and responding to feedback, in order to show we had a plan for moving forward.<\/p>\n

\"SurThrive<\/p>\n

There were plenty of concerns regarding the faculty understanding our project. \u00a0First,\u00a0in what we had made, there weren’t many direct ties to disasters. \u00a0We\u00a0wanted to make it clear in our presentation\u00a0that our project was indeed about disasters, and the relationship would become clearer as we added more content. \u00a0Another concern was that they wouldn’t get the metaphor angle. \u00a0Again, with the build in the state it was in, it wasn’t immediately obvious how our game would make use of metaphors, so we made sure we spent a lot of time discussing it, and even prepared an extra slide at the end in case people asked questions about it.<\/p>\n

\"SurThrive<\/p>\n

In the end, those concerns turned out to be well-founded. \u00a0Despite explaining our\u00a0intended use of metaphors, and fielding a question about it during the Q & A, the faculty felt they still didn’t understand how our project used metaphors. \u00a0Similarly, even though we led off the presentation talking about disasters, they didn’t see\u00a0how it was connected to our project. \u00a0Both of these are understandable, as we hadn’t begun adding disaster-specific content, and without it it’s hard to see how exactly our project will leverage metaphors. \u00a0What was more surprising was how the faculty reacted to the presentation itself. \u00a0While nobody pointed out any major flaws with it, a series of minor mistakes, misstatements, and questionable content served to distract the faculty from the core of our presentation.<\/p>\n

\"SurThrive<\/p>\n

The problems\u00a0apparently started from the beginning. \u00a0We began by showing a video, but it started a few seconds too early. \u00a0This overlapped with the speaker onstage, which apparently caused the audience to miss its importance. \u00a0There were also clips from Hollywood movies mixed in with actual disaster footage, which was a distraction. \u00a0In describing our discussion\u00a0of metaphors, faculty objected to our tone, saying we came off as arrogant.\u00a0Other\u00a0faculty members objected to our statement that the media was the cause of people having warped views\u00a0of disasters. \u00a0However\u00a0the biggest blow against us was apparently when we showed our demo. \u00a0In the past, we’d received feedback that our bowlhead characters looked… somewhat phallic. \u00a0It was a problem we were planning on addressing, but something we figured could wait until after Halves. \u00a0Apparently, faculty picked up on it right away, and had a hard time taking our presentation seriously after that.<\/p>\n

\"SurThrive<\/p>\n

This was a huge lesson in testing your presentation thoroughly, with a few different audiences. \u00a0While we rehearsed and polished our slides, we perhaps didn’t get enough outside input on our content, and how we were presenting it. \u00a0That being said, we received a lot of valuable feedback about our project, aside from the feedback on the presentation itself. \u00a0We definitely want to start adding more disaster-specific content, both to make the connection to disasters clearer as well as to give us a chance to use our metaphors. \u00a0We also will put more of an emphasis on gathering data and hard numbers for our final presentation, as that was another complaint we received. \u00a0Overall, this feedback has caused us to take a step back and assess the direction we’re going. \u00a0We’ve realized we need a clearer picture of how we’re connecting disaster, metaphor, and the gameplay of our project. \u00a0We also want to have a\u00a0more directed focus as to how all these things will help our client achieve their goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Week 9 was rather\u00a0uneventful, given that the majority of our team was away at SXSW and GDC. \u00a0Those that remained at the ETC continued working on adding additional gameplay features and finalized\u00a0our build for Halves. \u00a0Fortunately, we had finished the majority of the presentation before we broke for Spring Break, so we were ready to […]<\/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-75","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\/75"}],"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=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/81"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/projects-old.etc.cmu.edu\/surthrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}