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PROFESSOR: So one of the
big mantras in any kind

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of environment is testing.

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You have to keep
testing your game,

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because no plan meets first
contact with the user.

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You have to be able to see
how real people are going

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to respond to the
stuff that you're

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making as soon as
possible, because many

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of your assumptions going into
a project are going to be wrong.

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Now, we encourage students to
go out and test their games

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with as many people as
possible outside of class.

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This is crucial for the
development process.

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And there are a couple of
assignments where they actually

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have to show us the
results of that testing.

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And it's pretty much as
simple as sitting somebody

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in front of a computer with
the latest version of the game,

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or maybe with the paper
version of the game,

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giving them a couple
of instructions

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just so that they
can get started,

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and then stepping back,
watching, and taking notes.

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Trying to provide as little
guidance as possible,

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so that they can
actually see how

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a player who knows
nothing about the game

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responds to it for
the first time.

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However, sometimes it
can be difficult to get

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a lot of testing done
outside of class.

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And students may be a little
bit shy approaching strangers,

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for instance, even
other MIT students.

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So what we do also
in class is we

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get different teams to
play each other's games

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and give the feedback.

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The quality of that feedback's
a little bit different,

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because everybody the a room at
that point is in the same boat.

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They are all making
games, and all

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trying to give
feedback in the way

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that a game developer
will give another game

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developer, as opposed
to, say, a naive

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player who just wants to have
a fun time playing this game.

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We will also be giving
feedback as instructors.

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We give them our experience,
both as developers

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and this instructors.

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And we can tell them,
that's a great idea,

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but there's no way
you're going to get

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it done within the amount of
time left in this semester,

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because we've seen it.

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We've seen how these projects
tend to go during the class.

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No one else in the class
has gone through this class

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multiple times.

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So this is basically a way to
get feedback about the game.

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And we teach students
various methods

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to get the
information they want,

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and to record it, such
as questionnaires,

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for instance, different
observational techniques,

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different ways to script the
process of getting a new user

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to actually get started.

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And most importantly,
the importance

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of just doing this a lot.

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PROFESSOR: So there are
a lot of different ways

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you can do project management.

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The one that we teach and
we favor at in our course

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is we look at agile project
management techniques.

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Most specifically, we look
at the one called Scrum.

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And by the nature of agile,
agile project management really

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requires a team to
work with itself a lot

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to understand how the
team works together

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and to understand each
of their team members'

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strengths and weaknesses.

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This is exactly not what we
give our students a chance

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to do in the course
of the course,

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unfortunately, because they
are working on short projects.

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Each project tends to have
slightly different goals.

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And they're changing
teams frequently.

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So what we do do is we give
them a set of agile tools.

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We introduce them to the concept
of backlogs, project backlogs,

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creating very short
vision statements

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to describe what the
goal of their project

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is, but not go into a
whole lot of detail.

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We have them make
project backlogs

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that list all the features
they would like to have.

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We have them take a look at how
they break that amount of work

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down into how much can
we get done in a week?

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And realistically
trying to figure out

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how much they can get done
in a week, at which point

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they realize their
project backlog

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is about nine weeks long.

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And they can trim
down from there

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before they get started on some
of the less important things.

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But we show them the tools.

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We walk them through
using the tools.

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And then we
encourage them to use

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the tools that work best for
the group that they're with

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and the project
they're working on.

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So instead of saying,
this is how you do it.

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Shunk.

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We say, here are a set of tools.

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Work with all of them.

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Use the ones that work best.

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And try to iterate not
just your project, but also

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the way you are
managing your project

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and the way you're working
together with each other.

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Because that's the only way to
get to a better working team,

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is to find out what works.

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Accept that some of your
techniques don't work.

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And try something new,
try something better,

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until you do find what works
with that particular group

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of people.

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PROFESSOR: So we're
not only talking

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about the tools and processes,
the hard skills when

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it comes to project
management, but we're also

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looking at iterating on their
soft skills, which often comes

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down to just how do you talk
to another person respectfully?

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We talk about team dynamics.

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So teams tend to grow
in a particular way.

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And often, there are shared
qualities that all teams have,

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when it comes from forming
from when they're getting

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their first conflict,
and trying to get over

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their first conflict, to when
they're actually performing

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pretty efficiently,
and then when

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they feel like they're just
really kicking butt and really

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moving forward.

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We try to help them get
through to that final stage.

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At best, they usually
get to right to the point

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where they really
start performing along,

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really start being efficient
in what they're doing.

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But what we want to do is have
them see the whole process,

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see how the stages
differ, and then,

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come up with ways and approaches
to then get themselves

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through the process,
and being able to talk

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to their other teammates about,
maybe, a problem happened.

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Maybe somebody didn't
check in some code.

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And it caused two days
of work to go away.

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There are better things to
do than just to rant and rail

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at this other person.

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So what are the
other things they can

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do to get through that problem?

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So we want them to
talk about that.

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We want them to
think about that.

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We talk about it a
little bit in class.

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And we ask them to give us
what would they do again?

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If they had do this again in the
future, what would they change?

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What would they do differently?

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So we're asking them
to do that through

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their individual write-ups.

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We ask for a lot of
reflection on the class,

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on not just the game design
process, the game development

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process, but also this
project management process,

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and the communication between
team members, as well.