1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,019 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,019 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,330 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,330 --> 00:00:17,217 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,217 --> 00:00:17,842 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:26,240 --> 00:00:30,160 PROFESSOR: Schedule for the remainder of the semester. 9 00:00:30,160 --> 00:00:33,090 Today is a short week. 10 00:00:33,090 --> 00:00:36,870 Normal day today, slightly different day on Wednesday. 11 00:00:36,870 --> 00:00:39,180 I'll talk about that in the lecture today. 12 00:00:39,180 --> 00:00:43,910 Basically we hope to have the official class ended by 2:00pm. 13 00:00:43,910 --> 00:00:46,630 So 1:00 to 2:00 will be class on Wednesday. 14 00:00:46,630 --> 00:00:50,040 After 2:00, working in your groups 15 00:00:50,040 --> 00:00:52,230 or taking off early if you need to take off early 16 00:00:52,230 --> 00:00:53,414 for a flight or whatnot. 17 00:00:53,414 --> 00:00:55,080 So it's up to your teams, whether or not 18 00:00:55,080 --> 00:00:58,990 you're working in here or not on Wednesday. 19 00:00:58,990 --> 00:01:02,890 This is also going to be the last lecture by us, 20 00:01:02,890 --> 00:01:04,590 I believe, on the schedule. 21 00:01:04,590 --> 00:01:07,890 Next week we've got two guest lectures. 22 00:01:07,890 --> 00:01:10,539 One, on December 1 we've got a panel 23 00:01:10,539 --> 00:01:11,830 from the Indie Game Collective. 24 00:01:11,830 --> 00:01:14,413 They're going to be talking to us about the business of making 25 00:01:14,413 --> 00:01:15,880 Indie games. 26 00:01:15,880 --> 00:01:20,070 Two people who have their own businesses, their own studios, 27 00:01:20,070 --> 00:01:21,760 and how their studios work together. 28 00:01:21,760 --> 00:01:23,830 So that should be interesting for you. 29 00:01:23,830 --> 00:01:28,230 And then on December 3, on that Wednesday, we 30 00:01:28,230 --> 00:01:31,870 have Sean Baptiste from Fire Hose Games talking 31 00:01:31,870 --> 00:01:34,080 to us on marketing, communication, and community 32 00:01:34,080 --> 00:01:35,850 management for games. 33 00:01:35,850 --> 00:01:40,280 Because we're seeing you can't just put out a PR release 34 00:01:40,280 --> 00:01:42,040 and buy some advertising, you need 35 00:01:42,040 --> 00:01:44,820 to build a community if you're making games professionally. 36 00:01:44,820 --> 00:01:46,736 You need to find your players, because there's 37 00:01:46,736 --> 00:01:49,190 lots of games they could be playing besides your own. 38 00:01:49,190 --> 00:01:51,330 So he'll be talking to us about that. 39 00:01:51,330 --> 00:01:53,810 The week after that is entirely based 40 00:01:53,810 --> 00:01:55,610 around your presentations. 41 00:01:55,610 --> 00:02:00,670 So December 8 is a rehearsal in class, live reversal 42 00:02:00,670 --> 00:02:01,420 with your game. 43 00:02:01,420 --> 00:02:04,070 If your game works on that date-- hopefully 44 00:02:04,070 --> 00:02:08,259 it will-- but definitely your slides 45 00:02:08,259 --> 00:02:11,381 and your spoken presentation. 46 00:02:11,381 --> 00:02:13,880 We will give you feedback, you will then take that feedback, 47 00:02:13,880 --> 00:02:16,650 improve your presentation, improving your grade, 48 00:02:16,650 --> 00:02:19,340 and give it as the final presentation on Wednesday, 49 00:02:19,340 --> 00:02:21,890 December 10. 50 00:02:21,890 --> 00:02:25,250 At the end of the class on December 10 it'll be open play. 51 00:02:25,250 --> 00:02:27,990 So after all the presentations are over 52 00:02:27,990 --> 00:02:29,532 we're going to have some guests here. 53 00:02:29,532 --> 00:02:30,990 You'll be able to open your laptops 54 00:02:30,990 --> 00:02:33,560 and play each other's games and have guests play your games. 55 00:02:33,560 --> 00:02:36,740 So that should be fun and exciting, 56 00:02:36,740 --> 00:02:41,350 and maybe a little scary, which is good. 57 00:02:41,350 --> 00:02:46,239 So plans for today then. 58 00:02:46,239 --> 00:02:48,280 I got caught on that-- not 5 minute, but 2 minute 59 00:02:48,280 --> 00:02:48,870 presentations. 60 00:02:48,870 --> 00:02:51,750 Basically short, informal presentation 61 00:02:51,750 --> 00:02:55,290 just like we did a few weeks ago, I believe. 62 00:02:55,290 --> 00:02:59,750 We'd like to know about the status of your game, what 63 00:02:59,750 --> 00:03:02,250 features you're working on, what features are not 64 00:03:02,250 --> 00:03:04,200 being worked on right now, what features 65 00:03:04,200 --> 00:03:08,000 might be dropped and cut, and I'd also like to see your game. 66 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:09,920 So if you have got one person talking, 67 00:03:09,920 --> 00:03:13,180 maybe another person showing the game, maybe playing the game. 68 00:03:13,180 --> 00:03:15,060 This could be what the game looks like today. 69 00:03:15,060 --> 00:03:19,610 This could be the version of the game you tested last week, 70 00:03:19,610 --> 00:03:21,419 but have something show-able, something 71 00:03:21,419 --> 00:03:23,460 visual for us to see so that we can-- when you're 72 00:03:23,460 --> 00:03:25,127 talking about your game we understand 73 00:03:25,127 --> 00:03:26,210 what you're talking about. 74 00:03:26,210 --> 00:03:29,530 With no slides, of course, for this presentation. 75 00:03:29,530 --> 00:03:31,820 For presentation on 8th-- on the 10th 76 00:03:31,820 --> 00:03:36,459 that is more formal, slides, all the good stuff. 77 00:03:36,459 --> 00:03:38,250 There's a description about that in Stellar 78 00:03:38,250 --> 00:03:44,470 and we'll talk more about that next Monday. 79 00:03:44,470 --> 00:03:46,810 After that I'm going to give a short, about 30 80 00:03:46,810 --> 00:03:49,260 minute, lecture on cutting features, 81 00:03:49,260 --> 00:03:53,730 some strategies on how to do it, why you should do it, 82 00:03:53,730 --> 00:03:54,480 things like that. 83 00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:57,250 Might be obvious, may not be obvious. 84 00:03:57,250 --> 00:03:58,450 After that is work in class. 85 00:03:58,450 --> 00:04:01,771 Pablo is here to give you feedback on your games, 86 00:04:01,771 --> 00:04:04,020 so we'll be giving you feedback on your presentations. 87 00:04:04,020 --> 00:04:06,100 If we have questions about what you just talked about, 88 00:04:06,100 --> 00:04:07,830 but also he'll be going around and available for each 89 00:04:07,830 --> 00:04:09,955 of your teams to talk about the status of your game 90 00:04:09,955 --> 00:04:13,340 and what's going on with your game. 91 00:04:13,340 --> 00:04:15,800 That is class today. 92 00:04:15,800 --> 00:04:16,593 Any questions? 93 00:04:19,370 --> 00:04:19,870 All right. 94 00:04:19,870 --> 00:04:22,300 So it is 1:10. 95 00:04:22,300 --> 00:04:25,070 Are all the teams feel ready to give presentations right now 96 00:04:25,070 --> 00:04:27,619 or do you need a couple minutes? 97 00:04:27,619 --> 00:04:29,017 AUDIENCE: Couple minutes. 98 00:04:29,017 --> 00:04:30,100 PROFESSOR: Couple minutes? 99 00:04:30,100 --> 00:04:30,445 All right. 100 00:04:30,445 --> 00:04:31,986 So we're going to give you 5 minutes. 101 00:04:31,986 --> 00:04:34,270 1:15 I'm going to come back up here and Snap 102 00:04:34,270 --> 00:04:36,519 is going to start. 103 00:04:36,519 --> 00:04:37,435 TEJ CHAJED: All right. 104 00:04:37,435 --> 00:04:38,409 Hi everybody. 105 00:04:38,409 --> 00:04:39,870 I'm Snap-- I'm from Snap. 106 00:04:39,870 --> 00:04:41,331 I am not Snap. 107 00:04:41,331 --> 00:04:44,100 I'm Tej. 108 00:04:44,100 --> 00:04:46,690 And so we've made a lot of progress on our game 109 00:04:46,690 --> 00:04:49,820 and we've been able to run it a few times, 110 00:04:49,820 --> 00:04:52,270 but it has not changed a lot since probably anybody who's 111 00:04:52,270 --> 00:04:54,920 played the game has seen it. 112 00:04:54,920 --> 00:04:59,840 So I'll just go ahead and play one round of the game 113 00:04:59,840 --> 00:05:02,090 just to show off what we currently have, and then I'll 114 00:05:02,090 --> 00:05:03,350 talk a little bit about what we're 115 00:05:03,350 --> 00:05:04,650 planning to do in the future. 116 00:05:04,650 --> 00:05:08,430 So everybody from the team, you want to play? 117 00:05:12,660 --> 00:05:15,025 And can somebody start the game? 118 00:05:15,025 --> 00:05:15,995 AUDIENCE: I got it. 119 00:05:18,886 --> 00:05:21,260 TEJ CHAJED: All right so the way this game works is we're 120 00:05:21,260 --> 00:05:22,530 going to throw out a topic. 121 00:05:22,530 --> 00:05:23,980 In this case it's animals. 122 00:05:23,980 --> 00:05:25,972 We're all going to try to enter as many animals 123 00:05:25,972 --> 00:05:28,430 as we can think of, and we'll get points whenever two of us 124 00:05:28,430 --> 00:05:31,380 enter the same animal. 125 00:05:31,380 --> 00:05:32,240 All right. 126 00:05:32,240 --> 00:05:34,152 And they can obviously all cheat, but let's-- 127 00:05:34,152 --> 00:05:35,610 AUDIENCE: Wait, we already started? 128 00:05:35,610 --> 00:05:36,776 TEJ CHAJED: Yes, we started. 129 00:05:44,190 --> 00:05:46,170 Obviously I would not be showing this normally. 130 00:05:46,170 --> 00:05:50,099 This is a little bit easy to cheat on. 131 00:05:50,099 --> 00:05:50,974 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 132 00:05:54,720 --> 00:05:57,880 TEJ CHAJED: Although we've had some other forms of cheating. 133 00:05:57,880 --> 00:06:02,399 When Andrew was here, they just entered A, B, C, 134 00:06:02,399 --> 00:06:03,565 in a row next to each other. 135 00:06:16,660 --> 00:06:17,957 Anybody want to help? 136 00:06:17,957 --> 00:06:18,540 AUDIENCE: Cow. 137 00:06:18,540 --> 00:06:19,620 TEJ CHAJED: Cow. 138 00:06:19,620 --> 00:06:20,870 I guess this is also cheating. 139 00:06:23,834 --> 00:06:24,822 AUDIENCE: Lemur. 140 00:06:24,822 --> 00:06:26,304 Snail. 141 00:06:26,304 --> 00:06:29,268 AUDIENCE: Scorpion. 142 00:06:29,268 --> 00:06:30,750 AUDIENCE: Amoeba. 143 00:06:30,750 --> 00:06:32,232 AUDIENCE: Jaguar. 144 00:06:32,232 --> 00:06:33,714 AUDIENCE: Chicken. 145 00:06:33,714 --> 00:06:34,613 [INAUDIBLE] 146 00:06:34,613 --> 00:06:35,196 AUDIENCE: Pig. 147 00:06:35,196 --> 00:06:36,184 AUDIENCE: Paramecium. 148 00:06:36,184 --> 00:06:37,371 AUDIENCE: Veal. 149 00:06:37,371 --> 00:06:37,870 [LAUGHTER] 150 00:06:37,870 --> 00:06:39,286 TEJ CHAJED: Veal is not an animal. 151 00:06:44,530 --> 00:06:46,126 I guess baby deer is. 152 00:06:46,126 --> 00:06:47,114 AUDIENCE: Geese. 153 00:06:47,114 --> 00:06:47,614 Human. 154 00:06:52,534 --> 00:06:53,450 TEJ CHAJED: All right. 155 00:06:53,450 --> 00:06:54,825 So I think that gives you an idea 156 00:06:54,825 --> 00:06:56,530 of how this game plays out. 157 00:06:56,530 --> 00:06:58,412 Can somebody stop the game? 158 00:06:58,412 --> 00:07:00,720 AUDIENCE: I got it. 159 00:07:00,720 --> 00:07:02,722 TEJ CHAJED: So right now we have-- 160 00:07:02,722 --> 00:07:04,011 AUDIENCE: [? Yes. ?] 161 00:07:04,011 --> 00:07:06,720 [LAUGHTER] 162 00:07:06,720 --> 00:07:09,000 TEJ CHAJED: So right now we have the game completely 163 00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:09,980 manually controlled. 164 00:07:09,980 --> 00:07:14,420 And this is because current use case-- in our current use cases 165 00:07:14,420 --> 00:07:16,140 for the client we've been playing 166 00:07:16,140 --> 00:07:19,140 the game with a limited number of words input 167 00:07:19,140 --> 00:07:21,260 and without a time limit. 168 00:07:21,260 --> 00:07:22,830 So we let the client just implement 169 00:07:22,830 --> 00:07:25,205 whatever time they want by starting and stopping the game 170 00:07:25,205 --> 00:07:26,510 appropriately. 171 00:07:26,510 --> 00:07:29,200 But we plan on also supporting an actual strict word 172 00:07:29,200 --> 00:07:33,040 limit as well as a natural time limit that can 173 00:07:33,040 --> 00:07:35,150 be displayed on the front end. 174 00:07:35,150 --> 00:07:38,999 We initially went with Phaser because we 175 00:07:38,999 --> 00:07:41,540 had a much different idea of how we would represent the game. 176 00:07:41,540 --> 00:07:43,750 But we ended up focusing more on words 177 00:07:43,750 --> 00:07:46,726 and, like, a more bare-bones representation. 178 00:07:46,726 --> 00:07:48,600 And so we're actually going to remove Phaser. 179 00:07:48,600 --> 00:07:50,370 Right now this is a Phaser window, 180 00:07:50,370 --> 00:07:52,100 but it's not really helping us at all. 181 00:07:52,100 --> 00:07:54,190 We're just entering words into a list. 182 00:07:54,190 --> 00:07:55,960 So we're dropping all of that and moving 183 00:07:55,960 --> 00:07:59,420 to just normal CSS, HTML. 184 00:07:59,420 --> 00:08:04,800 We are also planning on-- we've experimented in our thought 185 00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:07,000 processes about what sorts of ways 186 00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:10,150 we want to show scores and activity. 187 00:08:10,150 --> 00:08:13,275 We want to be able to show not just what words you're scoring 188 00:08:13,275 --> 00:08:15,760 and submitting, but also when are other people submitting 189 00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:17,926 words, when are other people scoring, how am I doing 190 00:08:17,926 --> 00:08:19,540 relative to everyone else. 191 00:08:19,540 --> 00:08:21,490 So we have a couple ideas around that. 192 00:08:21,490 --> 00:08:23,950 We also would like to show you a word cloud in real time. 193 00:08:23,950 --> 00:08:27,730 We currently have a word cloud for the back end. 194 00:08:27,730 --> 00:08:31,760 So this is the game we just played. 195 00:08:31,760 --> 00:08:35,110 And this is a-- and this is something 196 00:08:35,110 --> 00:08:37,270 that you can watch actually as a moderator, 197 00:08:37,270 --> 00:08:40,090 while you're playing, in real time. 198 00:08:40,090 --> 00:08:42,140 And then here's another game which 199 00:08:42,140 --> 00:08:46,500 is an actual game that the client ran in Berlin a week 200 00:08:46,500 --> 00:08:47,657 or so ago. 201 00:08:47,657 --> 00:08:49,920 So that was kind of cool that we actually 202 00:08:49,920 --> 00:08:53,510 were able to do a real playtest with the actual client 203 00:08:53,510 --> 00:08:56,138 in the real world. 204 00:08:56,138 --> 00:08:57,846 But in the future we definitely want this 205 00:08:57,846 --> 00:09:00,800 to look more interesting and to feel more competitive. 206 00:09:00,800 --> 00:09:03,445 We want people to be able to see what else is going on 207 00:09:03,445 --> 00:09:05,695 in the game, whereas right now you really can only see 208 00:09:05,695 --> 00:09:06,200 your scores. 209 00:09:09,712 --> 00:09:10,295 Any questions? 210 00:09:13,000 --> 00:09:16,745 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] questions or comments, [INAUDIBLE]. 211 00:09:16,745 --> 00:09:18,620 AUDIENCE: What's your biggest risk right now? 212 00:09:18,620 --> 00:09:21,802 Like, what's the thing that's most catastrophic? 213 00:09:21,802 --> 00:09:23,510 TEJ CHAJED: I think since we're switching 214 00:09:23,510 --> 00:09:28,580 the front end over to sort of new technology we need 215 00:09:28,580 --> 00:09:31,250 to make sure that a, that transitions over well, 216 00:09:31,250 --> 00:09:34,530 and b, that we have enough time to finish something 217 00:09:34,530 --> 00:09:36,960 new and useful rather than just reverting back 218 00:09:36,960 --> 00:09:37,920 to what we have now. 219 00:09:43,620 --> 00:09:45,530 AUDIENCE: How does Snap happen? 220 00:09:45,530 --> 00:09:47,390 TEJ CHAJED: So we have a server that 221 00:09:47,390 --> 00:09:48,810 is receiving all the words. 222 00:09:48,810 --> 00:09:51,610 And whenever it gets a word it adds it 223 00:09:51,610 --> 00:09:53,190 to a list of words for a player. 224 00:09:53,190 --> 00:09:55,160 And then every time it gets a word it also 225 00:09:55,160 --> 00:09:57,190 checks against all other lists. 226 00:09:57,190 --> 00:09:59,440 AUDIENCE: So it's basically any other player 227 00:09:59,440 --> 00:10:00,790 types the same word? 228 00:10:00,790 --> 00:10:01,510 TEJ CHAJED: Yes. 229 00:10:01,510 --> 00:10:03,960 In the same game. 230 00:10:03,960 --> 00:10:05,610 So for example, the game is now over. 231 00:10:05,610 --> 00:10:07,300 If you started a new game, that's 232 00:10:07,300 --> 00:10:08,720 an independent word list. 233 00:10:08,720 --> 00:10:09,830 Yeah? 234 00:10:09,830 --> 00:10:13,310 AUDIENCE: Just for curiosity, so let's say you put in "dog" 235 00:10:13,310 --> 00:10:15,790 and [? Priam ?] put in "dog" and then Sam put in "dog"-- 236 00:10:15,790 --> 00:10:17,960 TEJ CHAJED: Everybody gets one point right now. 237 00:10:17,960 --> 00:10:19,930 We're thinking of changing that and letting 238 00:10:19,930 --> 00:10:22,985 people get more than one point, or maybe even 239 00:10:22,985 --> 00:10:24,230 making it configurable. 240 00:10:24,230 --> 00:10:25,987 Most likely-- intuitively it seems 241 00:10:25,987 --> 00:10:28,570 that you should get more if more people have entered the word. 242 00:10:32,410 --> 00:10:33,638 PROFESSOR: Thank you. 243 00:10:33,638 --> 00:10:34,634 TEJ CHAJED: All right. 244 00:10:34,634 --> 00:10:39,116 [APPLAUSE] 245 00:10:39,116 --> 00:10:43,598 PROFESSOR: Next up is Awesome Cholera. 246 00:10:43,598 --> 00:10:46,586 Yes, that is not the real title. 247 00:10:46,586 --> 00:10:50,830 PABLO: While Awesome Cholera or other real title shows up, 248 00:10:50,830 --> 00:10:53,920 we will have a long conversation about details, 249 00:10:53,920 --> 00:10:56,122 but I'm very excited about the fact 250 00:10:56,122 --> 00:10:57,830 that it's already being used and working. 251 00:10:57,830 --> 00:11:00,690 And now the question will be how many features 252 00:11:00,690 --> 00:11:03,780 you want available to the [INAUDIBLE] player. 253 00:11:03,780 --> 00:11:05,780 And that selection process will be 254 00:11:05,780 --> 00:11:08,965 based on both client need, playtesting, and also 255 00:11:08,965 --> 00:11:14,030 your ambition on how much can be accomplished in this time. 256 00:11:14,030 --> 00:11:14,727 [INAUDIBLE] 257 00:11:14,727 --> 00:11:16,435 STUDENT 1: Do you want to do the talking? 258 00:11:16,435 --> 00:11:17,400 STUDENT 2: Yeah. 259 00:11:17,400 --> 00:11:19,860 So this was the last build to the game we playtested. 260 00:11:19,860 --> 00:11:22,350 We hadn't changed a lot. 261 00:11:22,350 --> 00:11:24,280 We tried to add instructions so that people 262 00:11:24,280 --> 00:11:25,686 kind of knew what was going on. 263 00:11:25,686 --> 00:11:26,810 And this is running, right? 264 00:11:26,810 --> 00:11:29,590 Can you click Start? 265 00:11:29,590 --> 00:11:32,370 So right now this is what people saw. they saw their villages, 266 00:11:32,370 --> 00:11:34,220 and some health bars. 267 00:11:34,220 --> 00:11:35,490 It was still kind of unclear. 268 00:11:35,490 --> 00:11:38,580 And over here you can see, like, the text is still really small. 269 00:11:38,580 --> 00:11:40,810 And when people clicked something 270 00:11:40,810 --> 00:11:43,430 to do education or something they either 271 00:11:43,430 --> 00:11:46,360 thought that, like, when they clicked that button 272 00:11:46,360 --> 00:11:47,551 it instantly did it. 273 00:11:47,551 --> 00:11:49,050 They didn't know that was a button-- 274 00:11:49,050 --> 00:11:51,550 like Educate About Soap was a button they could click. 275 00:11:51,550 --> 00:11:54,450 Also we had this really terrible pop-up bug 276 00:11:54,450 --> 00:11:57,986 that we're still trying to fix, but hopefully that'll be fixed. 277 00:11:57,986 --> 00:12:00,580 And so because we were having so many problems with the GUI 278 00:12:00,580 --> 00:12:03,610 we finally sat down and tried to redesign it. 279 00:12:03,610 --> 00:12:06,770 And so I haven't actually-- we haven't done this yet, 280 00:12:06,770 --> 00:12:09,010 but here are some really great drawings-- A plus, 281 00:12:09,010 --> 00:12:14,140 I said-- of what the new GUI will have. 282 00:12:14,140 --> 00:12:17,050 So above each locality we're going to have this little box. 283 00:12:17,050 --> 00:12:18,450 I kind of stole it from [? Civ ?] 284 00:12:18,450 --> 00:12:20,510 and a few other places, but-- So it's 285 00:12:20,510 --> 00:12:22,320 going to have the name of the locality. 286 00:12:22,320 --> 00:12:23,690 And it's even worse because it's going 287 00:12:23,690 --> 00:12:25,970 to look different from what this is because we've already talked 288 00:12:25,970 --> 00:12:27,540 about how we want to change it. 289 00:12:27,540 --> 00:12:31,220 And so behind the work locality is going to be a bar, 290 00:12:31,220 --> 00:12:33,190 and the bar is going to have a percentage 291 00:12:33,190 --> 00:12:34,694 green and a percentage red. 292 00:12:34,694 --> 00:12:36,652 And the percentage green will be the percentage 293 00:12:36,652 --> 00:12:38,575 of people in that locality that are healthy, 294 00:12:38,575 --> 00:12:39,991 and the red will be the percentage 295 00:12:39,991 --> 00:12:41,636 of people that are unhealthy. 296 00:12:41,636 --> 00:12:44,066 Above that-- sorry. 297 00:12:44,066 --> 00:12:46,690 Above the word Locality, there's a little arrow that represents 298 00:12:46,690 --> 00:12:48,850 the infection rate, which is something-- 299 00:12:48,850 --> 00:12:51,144 a lot of people used that word and thought that was 300 00:12:51,144 --> 00:12:53,310 the information they were getting, but they weren't. 301 00:12:53,310 --> 00:12:55,692 They were getting the percentage of people infected. 302 00:12:55,692 --> 00:12:57,233 And so a lot of people wanted to know 303 00:12:57,233 --> 00:12:59,700 how's the infection rate being changed. 304 00:12:59,700 --> 00:13:01,200 And so we're going to have an arrow. 305 00:13:01,200 --> 00:13:03,964 And right now it's just going to be, like, up if it's positive, 306 00:13:03,964 --> 00:13:04,880 down if it's negative. 307 00:13:04,880 --> 00:13:07,005 But we want to also change it so that they can tell 308 00:13:07,005 --> 00:13:08,672 the magnitude of that as well. 309 00:13:08,672 --> 00:13:10,130 But we're also trying to keep it so 310 00:13:10,130 --> 00:13:12,588 that people aren't getting too many numbers thrown at them. 311 00:13:12,588 --> 00:13:14,820 So we're still trying to iron that one out. 312 00:13:14,820 --> 00:13:18,760 Below the Locality are a bunch of symbols 313 00:13:18,760 --> 00:13:22,070 representing the different things you can do. 314 00:13:22,070 --> 00:13:23,570 What we thought we were going to do 315 00:13:23,570 --> 00:13:27,230 is if you've implemented them they'll be there in color, 316 00:13:27,230 --> 00:13:30,860 and they'll be counting down so you know how much longer 317 00:13:30,860 --> 00:13:32,520 that will be in effect. 318 00:13:32,520 --> 00:13:34,970 And they'll also have a gold ring around them or something 319 00:13:34,970 --> 00:13:37,386 to say, like, if you've educated [? them ?] about it which 320 00:13:37,386 --> 00:13:39,611 means it's more effective. 321 00:13:39,611 --> 00:13:42,030 And then the other screen is the screen 322 00:13:42,030 --> 00:13:44,520 you get when you click-- there will be a little thing that 323 00:13:44,520 --> 00:13:47,490 says Aid Locality above the Locality thing 324 00:13:47,490 --> 00:13:49,320 for each of the different localities. 325 00:13:49,320 --> 00:13:51,861 And over [? on this ?] screen-- [? which ?] [? got kind of ?] 326 00:13:51,861 --> 00:13:54,640 messy-- but it'll show all the things you can do instead 327 00:13:54,640 --> 00:13:56,260 of just the ones that are unlocked, 328 00:13:56,260 --> 00:13:58,900 because a lot of people didn't know that things unlocked over 329 00:13:58,900 --> 00:13:59,420 time. 330 00:13:59,420 --> 00:14:01,394 So we'll have it showing everyone, 331 00:14:01,394 --> 00:14:03,560 hey, these are all the things and they'll eventually 332 00:14:03,560 --> 00:14:06,860 unlock, either over time or if you do a certain thing. 333 00:14:06,860 --> 00:14:10,124 And there will be two columns, one 334 00:14:10,124 --> 00:14:11,290 for educate and for prevent. 335 00:14:11,290 --> 00:14:13,720 And as you mouse over everything on the right-hand side 336 00:14:13,720 --> 00:14:15,920 of the screen, the description will come up 337 00:14:15,920 --> 00:14:18,430 telling you about the effectiveness and the duration, 338 00:14:18,430 --> 00:14:20,757 and giving you a description of what it's doing. 339 00:14:20,757 --> 00:14:22,590 We're hoping that this'll make it more clear 340 00:14:22,590 --> 00:14:25,451 as to what everything's doing, and it'll 341 00:14:25,451 --> 00:14:27,400 be easy to read chunks. 342 00:14:27,400 --> 00:14:29,190 So if they want to know more about it 343 00:14:29,190 --> 00:14:31,190 they can mouse over it and just kind of read it. 344 00:14:31,190 --> 00:14:33,170 Or if not they can just kind of quickly say, 345 00:14:33,170 --> 00:14:36,180 hey, this is pretty effective but the duration's 346 00:14:36,180 --> 00:14:38,900 short so I'll just use this for a bit because it's cheaper 347 00:14:38,900 --> 00:14:40,860 and then maybe I'll use the thing that's 348 00:14:40,860 --> 00:14:42,943 even more effective and has a longer duration when 349 00:14:42,943 --> 00:14:45,580 I have more money. 350 00:14:45,580 --> 00:14:48,120 The other thing on the map that I didn't scan yet 351 00:14:48,120 --> 00:14:50,240 is, on the map, on the very top of it, 352 00:14:50,240 --> 00:14:53,240 we're going to have a bar that tells you about what day it is 353 00:14:53,240 --> 00:14:56,100 and when you're getting money, because a lot of people 354 00:14:56,100 --> 00:14:58,155 were like, why am I getting money? 355 00:14:58,155 --> 00:14:59,750 And they didn't know time was passing. 356 00:14:59,750 --> 00:15:01,500 So we want to make all these things clear. 357 00:15:01,500 --> 00:15:05,760 And so I think the GUI redesign will help with that. 358 00:15:05,760 --> 00:15:08,280 Hopefully we should have it done after Thanksgiving. 359 00:15:08,280 --> 00:15:09,070 But yeah. 360 00:15:09,070 --> 00:15:11,945 That's where we're at right now. 361 00:15:11,945 --> 00:15:14,879 Any questions? 362 00:15:14,879 --> 00:15:17,324 PABLO: I have one, but you guys first. 363 00:15:17,324 --> 00:15:18,614 Anybody? 364 00:15:18,614 --> 00:15:19,280 STUDENT 2: Yeah. 365 00:15:19,280 --> 00:15:21,790 AUDIENCE: Is your goal for people to win this game 366 00:15:21,790 --> 00:15:24,450 and then have done the right things? 367 00:15:24,450 --> 00:15:25,920 Or is it for them to lose the game 368 00:15:25,920 --> 00:15:28,686 and then, based on that know what the right thing they 369 00:15:28,686 --> 00:15:29,707 should have done is? 370 00:15:29,707 --> 00:15:31,540 STUDENT 2: Right now the game's really hard, 371 00:15:31,540 --> 00:15:34,190 and it ends up you kind of lose if you just leave it alone, 372 00:15:34,190 --> 00:15:35,356 which is not what we wanted. 373 00:15:35,356 --> 00:15:39,480 STUDENT 1: As you saw, earlier, it just went to game over. 374 00:15:39,480 --> 00:15:41,890 STUDENT 2: We want them to realize the different things 375 00:15:41,890 --> 00:15:43,370 they can do. 376 00:15:43,370 --> 00:15:48,090 I don't think it's going to be superbly challenging right now, 377 00:15:48,090 --> 00:15:49,290 is what I'm imagining. 378 00:15:49,290 --> 00:15:51,289 Because you don't want people to do these things 379 00:15:51,289 --> 00:15:52,874 and then be like, oh, these things 380 00:15:52,874 --> 00:15:55,040 obviously don't work because I keep losing the game. 381 00:15:55,040 --> 00:15:57,456 We want them to know that, like, hey, if I do these things 382 00:15:57,456 --> 00:15:58,394 it will help. 383 00:15:58,394 --> 00:16:00,310 And so that's what we're trying to get across. 384 00:16:00,310 --> 00:16:02,160 STUDENT 1: Another idea I think that we're not communicating 385 00:16:02,160 --> 00:16:04,440 effectively but [? is ?] [? an ?] idea we also want 386 00:16:04,440 --> 00:16:06,490 to communicate is that the position on the map is 387 00:16:06,490 --> 00:16:06,990 important. 388 00:16:06,990 --> 00:16:10,100 So like if the village is-- upstream villages-- 389 00:16:10,100 --> 00:16:13,310 stuff you do there compounds to the downstream villages 390 00:16:13,310 --> 00:16:16,170 just because, like, the water, you know-- if you're not 391 00:16:16,170 --> 00:16:17,620 treating the water correctly in an upstream village 392 00:16:17,620 --> 00:16:19,280 that water is going to be contaminated down 393 00:16:19,280 --> 00:16:20,370 to the downstream village. 394 00:16:20,370 --> 00:16:22,870 And at the end we also want to communicate through this game 395 00:16:22,870 --> 00:16:25,692 is that, like, if you focus on the upstream villages 396 00:16:25,692 --> 00:16:27,900 you'll have better results in the long-term because-- 397 00:16:27,900 --> 00:16:30,770 AUDIENCE: So I guess how would I discover that? 398 00:16:30,770 --> 00:16:31,800 Is that just playing the game many, many times? 399 00:16:31,800 --> 00:16:32,060 STUDENT 1: Exactly. 400 00:16:32,060 --> 00:16:34,018 So that's something we have yet to communicate. 401 00:16:34,018 --> 00:16:36,435 And we should figure out a way to communicate that 402 00:16:36,435 --> 00:16:39,020 to the audience. 403 00:16:39,020 --> 00:16:41,720 PABLO: So thank you. 404 00:16:41,720 --> 00:16:43,802 Good luck reconfiguring the things 405 00:16:43,802 --> 00:16:45,010 that need to be reconfigured. 406 00:16:45,010 --> 00:16:49,800 My intuition is that you would be better off [? amputating ?] 407 00:16:49,800 --> 00:16:54,755 choice, and leaving somewhere very visible [? other ?] that 408 00:16:54,755 --> 00:16:57,213 says, these are other things that could be done but are not 409 00:16:57,213 --> 00:16:58,370 represented in this game. 410 00:16:58,370 --> 00:17:00,500 Because otherwise it will be just too [INAUDIBLE]. 411 00:17:00,500 --> 00:17:02,510 And unless you make a really awesome game 412 00:17:02,510 --> 00:17:04,290 that people want to play and play 413 00:17:04,290 --> 00:17:07,357 until they've tried everything, it can be too intimidating. 414 00:17:07,357 --> 00:17:07,940 STUDENT 1: OK. 415 00:17:07,940 --> 00:17:10,023 PABLO: One of the options for your consideration-- 416 00:17:10,023 --> 00:17:13,409 because right now you have the options of soap 417 00:17:13,409 --> 00:17:17,939 and the latrines and vaccination and so on-- you could reduce it 418 00:17:17,939 --> 00:17:21,569 to the things that the player, the macro-decider 419 00:17:21,569 --> 00:17:25,130 could do in terms of public awareness campaigns. 420 00:17:25,130 --> 00:17:27,339 So it could be about [INAUDIBLE] the water, 421 00:17:27,339 --> 00:17:31,555 about washing your hands campaign and maybe 422 00:17:31,555 --> 00:17:32,480 one more thing. 423 00:17:32,480 --> 00:17:35,500 So limited to three things that are of the same kind-- 424 00:17:35,500 --> 00:17:38,650 you know, radio advertisement or sending people to [INAUDIBLE]. 425 00:17:38,650 --> 00:17:40,530 And maybe less villages. 426 00:17:40,530 --> 00:17:42,850 Again, just reduce choice. 427 00:17:42,850 --> 00:17:46,850 Reduce features so the gameplay experience is more engaging. 428 00:17:46,850 --> 00:17:48,840 I just want you to know this is also 429 00:17:48,840 --> 00:17:50,540 applicable to the other Cholera team. 430 00:17:50,540 --> 00:17:53,370 The Ghana team is now really interested in promoting hand 431 00:17:53,370 --> 00:17:56,490 washing because it's beneficial both to cholera and to Ebola, 432 00:17:56,490 --> 00:17:58,330 which is a serious threat in the area. 433 00:17:58,330 --> 00:18:01,277 So you are [? already know ?] doing what you're doing 434 00:18:01,277 --> 00:18:03,860 and if hand washing does not fit in the game, that's fine, OK? 435 00:18:03,860 --> 00:18:06,277 You are doing what we asked you months ago, 436 00:18:06,277 --> 00:18:07,110 not what we say now. 437 00:18:07,110 --> 00:18:10,037 But if you find a way to make hand 438 00:18:10,037 --> 00:18:12,340 washing fit as one of the choices, 439 00:18:12,340 --> 00:18:14,490 it's much better than having three vaccination 440 00:18:14,490 --> 00:18:17,245 choices and two moving waste choices and stuff like that. 441 00:18:17,245 --> 00:18:17,828 STUDENT 2: OK. 442 00:18:17,828 --> 00:18:18,328 PABLO: Good. 443 00:18:18,328 --> 00:18:19,373 And good luck. 444 00:18:19,373 --> 00:18:20,248 STUDENT 1: Thank you. 445 00:18:20,248 --> 00:18:22,184 STUDENT 2: Yeah, thank you. 446 00:18:22,184 --> 00:18:27,508 [APPLAUSE] 447 00:18:27,508 --> 00:18:28,980 PROFESSOR: Hello Waves. 448 00:18:28,980 --> 00:18:31,247 STUDENT 3: Our game is called Hello Waves. 449 00:18:31,247 --> 00:18:32,830 We don't have the title screen in yet, 450 00:18:32,830 --> 00:18:37,810 but the idea is still forecast-based financing. 451 00:18:37,810 --> 00:18:40,100 So it's a little washed out on there. 452 00:18:40,100 --> 00:18:42,900 But if you can see there are these five different sand 453 00:18:42,900 --> 00:18:47,020 castles with workers associated with each. 454 00:18:47,020 --> 00:18:49,630 And up here in corner we have a forecast 455 00:18:49,630 --> 00:18:52,570 of what the water level will be like in a couple days. 456 00:18:52,570 --> 00:18:55,036 This is the water level right here, and throughout the game 457 00:18:55,036 --> 00:18:56,570 it'll rise and fall. 458 00:18:56,570 --> 00:18:59,750 And the idea is not to let your workers get 459 00:18:59,750 --> 00:19:01,737 drowned by the rising water. 460 00:19:01,737 --> 00:19:03,320 The other aspect of the game though it 461 00:19:03,320 --> 00:19:06,420 that you have a certain amount of supplies 462 00:19:06,420 --> 00:19:09,419 and whenever you move someone from their castle 463 00:19:09,419 --> 00:19:10,960 in order to prevent them from getting 464 00:19:10,960 --> 00:19:14,610 drowned, they will consume supplies from that stock. 465 00:19:14,610 --> 00:19:16,380 And if you don't have enough supplies then 466 00:19:16,380 --> 00:19:18,300 they all take damage. 467 00:19:18,300 --> 00:19:21,017 So as you can see, right now everybody's 468 00:19:21,017 --> 00:19:21,850 in their own castle. 469 00:19:21,850 --> 00:19:24,660 If we click Next Turn the water level will change 470 00:19:24,660 --> 00:19:26,980 and we'll see that the forecast will update. 471 00:19:26,980 --> 00:19:30,750 We have a range of values on this forecast, 472 00:19:30,750 --> 00:19:32,634 a high prediction and a low prediction, 473 00:19:32,634 --> 00:19:34,300 and if you mouse over any of the castles 474 00:19:34,300 --> 00:19:36,470 you'll see a red line appear on the forecast 475 00:19:36,470 --> 00:19:41,040 just to help you orient what heights are on the forecast. 476 00:19:41,040 --> 00:19:42,860 Or if you're looking at the forecast, what 477 00:19:42,860 --> 00:19:44,680 it is in the real world. 478 00:19:44,680 --> 00:19:47,220 So you can see the water move. 479 00:19:47,220 --> 00:19:49,887 For these couple days right now the forecast is pretty low. 480 00:19:49,887 --> 00:19:51,470 If we see that's kind of getting close 481 00:19:51,470 --> 00:19:53,886 and we're worried about someone we can click and drag them 482 00:19:53,886 --> 00:19:58,840 to another castle, and on the next turn they'll move over. 483 00:19:58,840 --> 00:20:00,460 You can also click people to toggle 484 00:20:00,460 --> 00:20:02,459 between building and gathering. 485 00:20:02,459 --> 00:20:04,000 It's very hard to see the status text 486 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:05,208 right now because it's small. 487 00:20:05,208 --> 00:20:07,550 We threw that in quickly for right now. 488 00:20:07,550 --> 00:20:09,625 But he is set to building and these three 489 00:20:09,625 --> 00:20:11,000 are set to gathering. 490 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:13,010 So we'll see that each turn these three will 491 00:20:13,010 --> 00:20:15,340 gather one supply each. 492 00:20:15,340 --> 00:20:17,290 This teddy bear will consume one, 493 00:20:17,290 --> 00:20:19,160 so we'll see supplies go up by two, 494 00:20:19,160 --> 00:20:23,100 and victory progress will go up by one. 495 00:20:23,100 --> 00:20:25,060 What we have planned for the rest of the game 496 00:20:25,060 --> 00:20:26,960 is we've made a lot of progress in terms 497 00:20:26,960 --> 00:20:30,290 of the intuitiveness of the game, once you understand it, 498 00:20:30,290 --> 00:20:32,850 but right now, there's a lot in the game that isn't 499 00:20:32,850 --> 00:20:34,600 explained from the get-go. 500 00:20:34,600 --> 00:20:37,240 And so if I give that spiel to anyone 501 00:20:37,240 --> 00:20:40,850 they can play the game fine and they do pretty with it. 502 00:20:40,850 --> 00:20:43,760 But if you just open up the game, you're lost. 503 00:20:43,760 --> 00:20:46,339 So a lot of our work is going to be on the UI, 504 00:20:46,339 --> 00:20:48,100 of making things more self-evident 505 00:20:48,100 --> 00:20:51,240 and making sure that people can understand what's going on 506 00:20:51,240 --> 00:20:53,935 and what their actions will do without me having 507 00:20:53,935 --> 00:20:55,650 to stand there and tell them. 508 00:20:59,019 --> 00:21:00,060 PROFESSOR: Any questions? 509 00:21:03,480 --> 00:21:03,980 All right. 510 00:21:03,980 --> 00:21:07,085 So I'm going to ask you again, what is the biggest risk going 511 00:21:07,085 --> 00:21:09,294 forward? 512 00:21:09,294 --> 00:21:11,270 STUDENT 4: I mean, I think in terms 513 00:21:11,270 --> 00:21:13,870 of our technical implementation we've already 514 00:21:13,870 --> 00:21:15,750 got good playtests of our work done 515 00:21:15,750 --> 00:21:17,960 and we have, like, all of our major graphics in 516 00:21:17,960 --> 00:21:19,270 and things like that. 517 00:21:19,270 --> 00:21:21,500 So I think our major risk going ahead 518 00:21:21,500 --> 00:21:24,920 is not being able to explain the game properly. 519 00:21:24,920 --> 00:21:27,670 And so even if we have finished product 520 00:21:27,670 --> 00:21:29,690 it may still not be playable if we 521 00:21:29,690 --> 00:21:32,222 don't write good introductions. 522 00:21:32,222 --> 00:21:33,150 PABLO: All right. 523 00:21:33,150 --> 00:21:39,010 So on that front think of incremental additional 524 00:21:39,010 --> 00:21:39,510 features. 525 00:21:39,510 --> 00:21:42,010 So the games with the super simple, even 526 00:21:42,010 --> 00:21:44,820 maybe too boring choices, but then a new choice arrive. 527 00:21:44,820 --> 00:21:47,450 So the learning be playing can be 528 00:21:47,450 --> 00:21:50,620 staggered in a way that is [? enjoyable ?]. 529 00:21:50,620 --> 00:21:51,120 Good. 530 00:21:51,120 --> 00:21:56,590 Good luck to you, and we'll talk more about choices later. 531 00:21:56,590 --> 00:21:58,850 I should say that this high versus low prediction 532 00:21:58,850 --> 00:22:00,790 is something that I wish scientists did, 533 00:22:00,790 --> 00:22:01,540 like you're doing. 534 00:22:01,540 --> 00:22:03,460 Because most people say one value, 535 00:22:03,460 --> 00:22:05,496 then it's not that value [INAUDIBLE] 536 00:22:05,496 --> 00:22:07,948 earlier that [INAUDIBLE] forecast. 537 00:22:07,948 --> 00:22:08,448 Good. 538 00:22:08,448 --> 00:22:09,924 Thank you. 539 00:22:09,924 --> 00:22:13,368 [APPLAUSE] 540 00:22:13,368 --> 00:22:15,830 PROFESSOR: Heat Wave, come on down. 541 00:22:15,830 --> 00:22:18,390 STUDENT 5: So the main things that Heat Wave 542 00:22:18,390 --> 00:22:22,080 is focusing on right now are playability and education. 543 00:22:22,080 --> 00:22:24,320 As you can see this is our start screen. 544 00:22:24,320 --> 00:22:25,730 It doesn't have any instructions. 545 00:22:25,730 --> 00:22:26,881 It's very lame. 546 00:22:26,881 --> 00:22:28,130 We're completely redoing that. 547 00:22:28,130 --> 00:22:31,040 We're also redoing our end screen and our forecast screen 548 00:22:31,040 --> 00:22:33,730 because we want visual consistency and just 549 00:22:33,730 --> 00:22:36,370 overall improved playability by making 550 00:22:36,370 --> 00:22:38,890 the gameplay states more clear and more connected 551 00:22:38,890 --> 00:22:39,830 to each other. 552 00:22:39,830 --> 00:22:43,070 The other thing we're working on is we don't currently 553 00:22:43,070 --> 00:22:44,410 have an explicit end condition. 554 00:22:44,410 --> 00:22:46,590 You kind of just play for however you want to play, 555 00:22:46,590 --> 00:22:49,990 and we're going to add in like a something happens 556 00:22:49,990 --> 00:22:55,146 that eventually too many people faint, get heat stroke, 557 00:22:55,146 --> 00:22:56,520 the game's over, so you have more 558 00:22:56,520 --> 00:22:58,200 of an incentive to play well. 559 00:22:58,200 --> 00:23:01,380 And then finally something we're working on is user investment. 560 00:23:01,380 --> 00:23:04,160 So we are actually-- where's my mouse? 561 00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:05,160 Sorry. 562 00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:09,520 We are currently working on redoing pretty much all 563 00:23:09,520 --> 00:23:12,380 of our character graphics because we 564 00:23:12,380 --> 00:23:14,400 think that having better character graphics 565 00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:16,090 will make the game more intuitive. 566 00:23:16,090 --> 00:23:18,800 So one of the ways you play this game, if you haven't played 567 00:23:18,800 --> 00:23:20,240 it before, is you have a bunch of characters-- 568 00:23:20,240 --> 00:23:21,781 I'll show in a second-- and you click 569 00:23:21,781 --> 00:23:24,080 on them based on different characteristics to try 570 00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:26,810 and offer them water or tell them, 571 00:23:26,810 --> 00:23:29,160 maybe you should go inside, it's really how out today. 572 00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:31,845 And different people will react differently to you. 573 00:23:31,845 --> 00:23:33,995 And right now you have a bunch of characters-- 574 00:23:33,995 --> 00:23:35,530 where's my mouse? 575 00:23:35,530 --> 00:23:38,590 And I'm going to play this. 576 00:23:38,590 --> 00:23:40,220 They all look pretty much the same. 577 00:23:40,220 --> 00:23:41,130 And we have labels-- 578 00:23:41,130 --> 00:23:42,100 [LAUGHTER] 579 00:23:42,100 --> 00:23:45,010 Uh, you're already laughing. 580 00:23:45,010 --> 00:23:45,784 Did something-- 581 00:23:45,784 --> 00:23:46,950 AUDIENCE: There was a flare. 582 00:23:46,950 --> 00:23:47,783 STUDENT 5: Oh, yeah. 583 00:23:47,783 --> 00:23:50,345 So I'll talk about that in a second as well. 584 00:23:50,345 --> 00:23:53,760 [LAUGHTER] 585 00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:55,690 So we wanted to increase emotional investment 586 00:23:55,690 --> 00:23:56,280 in this game. 587 00:23:56,280 --> 00:23:58,770 So one thing I talked about was an explicit end condition. 588 00:23:58,770 --> 00:24:02,020 The other thing is-- we know that setting on fire 589 00:24:02,020 --> 00:24:05,050 is extreme and, at this point, kind of funny. 590 00:24:05,050 --> 00:24:06,070 We all just laughed. 591 00:24:06,070 --> 00:24:08,654 It's not meant to scare you, but it is meant to make you care. 592 00:24:08,654 --> 00:24:10,320 Before, we just had people disappearing. 593 00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:12,351 And, number one, people didn't know that people 594 00:24:12,351 --> 00:24:13,600 had disappeared on the screen. 595 00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:15,100 Players were like, what happened? 596 00:24:15,100 --> 00:24:16,550 Suddenly there are less people. 597 00:24:16,550 --> 00:24:18,340 And then they'd get to the newspaper scene 598 00:24:18,340 --> 00:24:20,680 and they'd say seven people have fainted. 599 00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:21,410 Nothing. 600 00:24:21,410 --> 00:24:24,760 So we added the fire just as a somewhat comedic element, 601 00:24:24,760 --> 00:24:26,740 somewhat just emotionally investment element. 602 00:24:26,740 --> 00:24:30,102 I don't want my people to get set on fire, you know? 603 00:24:30,102 --> 00:24:31,560 So that has to do with playability. 604 00:24:31,560 --> 00:24:34,580 And also the same thing with the graphics and the fire, 605 00:24:34,580 --> 00:24:35,860 is education. 606 00:24:35,860 --> 00:24:38,910 We wanted to make this stick with people long-term 607 00:24:38,910 --> 00:24:40,490 and we thought that maybe having, 608 00:24:40,490 --> 00:24:44,030 like, a more surprising reaction to them not doing anything 609 00:24:44,030 --> 00:24:46,027 would make it stick with them. 610 00:24:46,027 --> 00:24:48,610 Something else we're working on [? with get ?] education is we 611 00:24:48,610 --> 00:24:51,160 need better and more dialogue. 612 00:24:51,160 --> 00:24:56,680 So we redid the backend of our system for dialogue, 613 00:24:56,680 --> 00:24:59,526 and it doesn't-- uh-oh. 614 00:24:59,526 --> 00:25:00,026 Sorry. 615 00:25:00,026 --> 00:25:01,480 I'm really bad at this. 616 00:25:01,480 --> 00:25:04,650 We redid the backend so that it would support better choice 617 00:25:04,650 --> 00:25:05,380 trees. 618 00:25:05,380 --> 00:25:07,300 We haven't actually added the content yet, 619 00:25:07,300 --> 00:25:09,216 which is something we're working on right now, 620 00:25:09,216 --> 00:25:11,120 but we have the whole backend working 621 00:25:11,120 --> 00:25:13,910 so that you can make decisions that actually really do 622 00:25:13,910 --> 00:25:15,437 effect what happens next. 623 00:25:15,437 --> 00:25:17,270 Something people complained about throughout 624 00:25:17,270 --> 00:25:20,030 is they felt like their decision weren't having an impact. 625 00:25:20,030 --> 00:25:22,760 That's going to be a lot more clear now. 626 00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:27,680 And then finally we're implementing on setting up 627 00:25:27,680 --> 00:25:29,660 longer-term choices. 628 00:25:29,660 --> 00:25:31,980 So right now you can click on people 629 00:25:31,980 --> 00:25:35,930 and you might talk to them and they might not 630 00:25:35,930 --> 00:25:37,880 accept the water, they might accept the water. 631 00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:41,130 You might have a discussion with them and make them drink. 632 00:25:41,130 --> 00:25:43,550 But we wanted to have longer-term choices. 633 00:25:43,550 --> 00:25:46,190 So what if you wanted to set up a public water fountain 634 00:25:46,190 --> 00:25:47,150 or something like that? 635 00:25:47,150 --> 00:25:48,415 And another thing that we're talking about 636 00:25:48,415 --> 00:25:50,070 is setting up umbrellas and it might 637 00:25:50,070 --> 00:25:51,540 be worth more of your time to just, 638 00:25:51,540 --> 00:25:53,410 you know-- the forecast for the next day 639 00:25:53,410 --> 00:25:56,130 it might say it's going to be 108, but today it's only 80, 640 00:25:56,130 --> 00:25:58,240 so let's set up a water fountain today 641 00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:00,850 so that tomorrow all the people can just get water and be 642 00:26:00,850 --> 00:26:01,829 a little healthier. 643 00:26:01,829 --> 00:26:03,620 So that's the two things we're focusing on, 644 00:26:03,620 --> 00:26:05,440 playability and education. 645 00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:08,851 And we still have a lot of work to do, which is obvious, 646 00:26:08,851 --> 00:26:10,850 but we've done a lot of the backend work already 647 00:26:10,850 --> 00:26:13,788 and we think it's going pretty well. 648 00:26:13,788 --> 00:26:15,732 Any questions? 649 00:26:15,732 --> 00:26:17,676 PROFESSOR: Questions anyone? 650 00:26:17,676 --> 00:26:18,648 STUDENT 5: Yes? 651 00:26:18,648 --> 00:26:19,140 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 652 00:26:19,140 --> 00:26:20,390 STUDENT 5: Oh, Julia did this. 653 00:26:20,390 --> 00:26:21,569 Isn't it pretty? 654 00:26:21,569 --> 00:26:22,535 AUDIENCE: That's dope. 655 00:26:22,535 --> 00:26:23,018 AUDIENCE: Thanks. 656 00:26:23,018 --> 00:26:23,934 STUDENT 5: It is dope. 657 00:26:23,934 --> 00:26:24,467 I agree. 658 00:26:24,467 --> 00:26:25,916 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 659 00:26:25,916 --> 00:26:28,830 [LAUGHTER] 660 00:26:28,830 --> 00:26:31,710 STUDENT 5: Any other questions? 661 00:26:31,710 --> 00:26:33,470 PABLO: Thank you. 662 00:26:33,470 --> 00:26:34,400 Quick comments. 663 00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:37,280 I agree with the idea of making something like the flame that 664 00:26:37,280 --> 00:26:39,470 is visually compelling. 665 00:26:39,470 --> 00:26:43,160 You may want to think-- if that's what you end up, fine. 666 00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:46,870 But beware that the idea of fire is very much 667 00:26:46,870 --> 00:26:49,520 elicits a hazard, something external, 668 00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:51,510 whereas the nature of the heat wave risk 669 00:26:51,510 --> 00:26:53,745 is a combination of the hazard like the fire 670 00:26:53,745 --> 00:26:55,710 and the vulnerability of the player. 671 00:26:55,710 --> 00:26:57,500 How susceptible are you, which is 672 00:26:57,500 --> 00:26:59,920 different from an elderly asthmatic person 673 00:26:59,920 --> 00:27:01,660 versus a healthy sports person. 674 00:27:01,660 --> 00:27:05,530 So if you can brainstorm about how to depict that, 675 00:27:05,530 --> 00:27:07,685 which can be more evocative of the fact 676 00:27:07,685 --> 00:27:09,870 that it depends on the person and not 677 00:27:09,870 --> 00:27:10,930 just some external thing. 678 00:27:10,930 --> 00:27:11,210 STUDENT 5: OK. 679 00:27:11,210 --> 00:27:12,293 PABLO: I have no idea how. 680 00:27:12,293 --> 00:27:14,460 Maybe it's not doable, but if you can, 681 00:27:14,460 --> 00:27:17,414 that would be [? an invitation. ?] 682 00:27:17,414 --> 00:27:18,830 STUDENT 5: And even if we can't do 683 00:27:18,830 --> 00:27:20,330 that we're going to try to implement 684 00:27:20,330 --> 00:27:22,310 that same concept through the dialogue 685 00:27:22,310 --> 00:27:25,308 by making the dialogue very specific, based on the person. 686 00:27:25,308 --> 00:27:26,016 PABLO: Excellent. 687 00:27:26,016 --> 00:27:26,480 Great. 688 00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:27,979 STUDENT 5: Yeah, you had a question? 689 00:27:27,979 --> 00:27:29,130 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 690 00:27:29,130 --> 00:27:30,818 We found the fire funny. 691 00:27:30,818 --> 00:27:32,990 Do you think everybody would find it funny? 692 00:27:32,990 --> 00:27:35,120 STUDENT 5: So you have to think about the audience 693 00:27:35,120 --> 00:27:36,100 for this game. 694 00:27:36,100 --> 00:27:38,800 The audience for this game is the Red Cross worker. 695 00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:41,276 Now I don't necessarily think that all of them 696 00:27:41,276 --> 00:27:43,150 will think it's funny, but they'll definitely 697 00:27:43,150 --> 00:27:46,319 elicit some reaction, and I think that's what's important. 698 00:27:46,319 --> 00:27:47,860 Because before in our game we weren't 699 00:27:47,860 --> 00:27:51,560 eliciting any sort of reaction, so it wasn't memorable. 700 00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:54,567 The fire might be funny to some, it might be scary to others, 701 00:27:54,567 --> 00:27:56,650 thinking about people going on fire, I don't know. 702 00:27:56,650 --> 00:27:59,070 Me, personally, I think it's a little terrifying. 703 00:27:59,070 --> 00:28:01,270 But either way it elicits a reaction. 704 00:28:01,270 --> 00:28:03,550 That's really what we're going for. 705 00:28:03,550 --> 00:28:05,070 Any other questions? 706 00:28:05,070 --> 00:28:06,210 PABLO: One minor comment. 707 00:28:06,210 --> 00:28:06,966 STUDENT 5: Yes? 708 00:28:06,966 --> 00:28:08,466 PABLO: Most of the rest of the world 709 00:28:08,466 --> 00:28:10,599 uses degrees Celsius as opposed to Farenheit-- 710 00:28:10,599 --> 00:28:11,182 STUDENT 5: Oh. 711 00:28:11,182 --> 00:28:13,599 PABLO: So consider having a choice for [? that. ?] 712 00:28:13,599 --> 00:28:15,140 STUDENT 5: That's a great suggestion. 713 00:28:15,140 --> 00:28:16,030 Thank you. 714 00:28:16,030 --> 00:28:17,075 We'll take that into consideration. 715 00:28:17,075 --> 00:28:17,866 You had a question? 716 00:28:17,866 --> 00:28:20,040 PROFESSOR: And your biggest risk? 717 00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:23,900 STUDENT 5: Our biggest risk is-- so we're not 718 00:28:23,900 --> 00:28:27,510 adding any features, but from our product backlog 719 00:28:27,510 --> 00:28:29,960 it's just we're redoing a lot. 720 00:28:29,960 --> 00:28:33,530 So just the sheer amount and the breakdown of work-- 721 00:28:33,530 --> 00:28:36,258 it's just we're redoing a lot. 722 00:28:36,258 --> 00:28:37,719 PROFESSOR: And that's content work, 723 00:28:37,719 --> 00:28:39,684 or is it front and backend work still? 724 00:28:39,684 --> 00:28:41,850 STUDENT 5: So we redid a lot of the backend already, 725 00:28:41,850 --> 00:28:45,310 but in terms of the adding of objects, that's more backend. 726 00:28:45,310 --> 00:28:48,320 But in terms of the dialogue and stuff, that's more content. 727 00:28:48,320 --> 00:28:50,158 So we have work on both sides. 728 00:28:50,158 --> 00:28:51,592 PROFESSOR: OK. 729 00:28:51,592 --> 00:28:53,026 STUDENT 5: Thank you. 730 00:28:53,026 --> 00:28:53,982 PROFESSOR: Thank you. 731 00:28:53,982 --> 00:28:55,894 [APPLAUSE] 732 00:28:55,894 --> 00:28:58,907 Next up is Saving the Animal Village. 733 00:28:58,907 --> 00:28:59,490 STUDENT 6: OK. 734 00:28:59,490 --> 00:29:02,200 So I'm just going to start talking while Justin sets up. 735 00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:05,370 We are a subset of Saving the Animal Village. 736 00:29:05,370 --> 00:29:09,790 And our game is trying to teach cholera prevention 737 00:29:09,790 --> 00:29:12,370 through a series of minigames, three. 738 00:29:12,370 --> 00:29:16,670 And then the story is that the mayor 739 00:29:16,670 --> 00:29:18,130 needs help deciding whether or not 740 00:29:18,130 --> 00:29:20,680 cholera is what is plaguing the city 741 00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:24,160 or if it's this monster that you encounter in the beginning. 742 00:29:24,160 --> 00:29:27,950 And so the player will go through, explore the town, 743 00:29:27,950 --> 00:29:32,870 and try to convince the mayor that it is, indeed, cholera. 744 00:29:32,870 --> 00:29:38,580 The most prevalent things that we 745 00:29:38,580 --> 00:29:43,000 need to fix, I guess-- the prevalent problems that we need 746 00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:48,490 to fix are-- when we playtested with Pablo some time back 747 00:29:48,490 --> 00:29:53,340 he noted that our minigames-- for example, the filtration 748 00:29:53,340 --> 00:29:55,210 minigame-- wasn't really something 749 00:29:55,210 --> 00:29:58,090 that would connect to our audience, which were children 750 00:29:58,090 --> 00:30:01,940 who were in affected areas, like Ghana, from the ages of 8 751 00:30:01,940 --> 00:30:03,250 to 13. 752 00:30:03,250 --> 00:30:06,760 And we had this, like, factory setting before 753 00:30:06,760 --> 00:30:10,980 and it was not something a child would encounter ever. 754 00:30:10,980 --> 00:30:15,520 So what we're changing it to is, it's going to be inside a home 755 00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:19,610 and a mother's going to be the one that's bringing the water. 756 00:30:19,610 --> 00:30:23,890 And it's going to be basically things 757 00:30:23,890 --> 00:30:27,890 that children that will be playing this game 758 00:30:27,890 --> 00:30:28,650 can relate to. 759 00:30:28,650 --> 00:30:31,610 And we're still in the progress of changing that. 760 00:30:31,610 --> 00:30:38,280 And we're also in the progress of adding conversation UI 761 00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:41,750 that's functional and that we can 762 00:30:41,750 --> 00:30:46,380 use while not alienating the lower range of our age range. 763 00:30:46,380 --> 00:30:51,160 Because Pablo mentioned that the children in Ghana [? who are ?] 764 00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:53,970 8 years old might not be able to read as well as 765 00:30:53,970 --> 00:30:55,320 we want them to. 766 00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:57,390 So we're going to have more visual instructions 767 00:30:57,390 --> 00:31:01,290 as well, which is important. 768 00:31:01,290 --> 00:31:04,310 And that will probably be the deciding factor of 769 00:31:04,310 --> 00:31:08,320 whether or not this game will be successful. 770 00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:10,530 I would say the thing that is keeping 771 00:31:10,530 --> 00:31:15,000 us back the most right now is the art, which we have 772 00:31:15,000 --> 00:31:19,190 to synthesize to match Ghana culture 773 00:31:19,190 --> 00:31:22,384 and communicate our message as well. 774 00:31:25,870 --> 00:31:29,920 We're also attempting to implement a way to integrate 775 00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:32,480 the minigames more through our main scene, 776 00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:34,852 but we'll see how much progress we get through [? and ?] 777 00:31:34,852 --> 00:31:36,810 [? we'll have ?] [? to correct ?] that feature. 778 00:31:40,205 --> 00:31:41,175 Any questions? 779 00:31:45,550 --> 00:31:46,870 PABLO: Just one clarification. 780 00:31:46,870 --> 00:31:49,910 When I referred to matching, I like 781 00:31:49,910 --> 00:31:52,480 what you just showed way better than what was there before. 782 00:31:52,480 --> 00:31:54,615 And I think if this is the end aesthetic 783 00:31:54,615 --> 00:31:57,800 of that minigame, that's fine. 784 00:31:57,800 --> 00:32:01,810 My inclination is to think not so much matching 785 00:32:01,810 --> 00:32:05,330 to Ghana culture, but making it more adequate or suitable. 786 00:32:05,330 --> 00:32:09,380 So if it looks like science fiction to a Ghanaian child, 787 00:32:09,380 --> 00:32:11,100 that's fine. 788 00:32:11,100 --> 00:32:15,370 There must be someone from Ghana around the Boston area. 789 00:32:15,370 --> 00:32:20,070 Send an email, talk to taxi drivers, I don't know. 790 00:32:20,070 --> 00:32:23,000 Just like you're doing playtesting with kids, 791 00:32:23,000 --> 00:32:25,840 try to find someone from West Africa, if not Ghana 792 00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:27,850 so that they can tell you, no, cats 793 00:32:27,850 --> 00:32:30,189 are actually spiritually poisonous 794 00:32:30,189 --> 00:32:31,230 or whatever they may say. 795 00:32:31,230 --> 00:32:31,930 I have no idea. 796 00:32:31,930 --> 00:32:34,462 But you want to get some kind of feedback. 797 00:32:34,462 --> 00:32:35,380 I love cats. 798 00:32:35,380 --> 00:32:38,481 I hope they're not spiritually poisonous. 799 00:32:38,481 --> 00:32:38,980 Good. 800 00:32:38,980 --> 00:32:41,580 And then there were many, many games. 801 00:32:41,580 --> 00:32:44,500 We will converse later, but this core idea I think 802 00:32:44,500 --> 00:32:46,670 is a very useful one. 803 00:32:46,670 --> 00:32:51,910 I'll be keen to learn more about how the game can be adjusted 804 00:32:51,910 --> 00:32:55,872 in terms of speed of learning and the speed of-- as you 805 00:32:55,872 --> 00:32:57,580 master it and it becomes more complicated 806 00:32:57,580 --> 00:32:59,930 because of things moving faster or some kind 807 00:32:59,930 --> 00:33:01,290 of additional complexity. 808 00:33:01,290 --> 00:33:01,940 But good. 809 00:33:01,940 --> 00:33:04,600 Well done. 810 00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:05,760 PROFESSOR: So biggest risk? 811 00:33:05,760 --> 00:33:07,010 Are you going to say it's art? 812 00:33:07,010 --> 00:33:07,690 You mentioned the art. 813 00:33:07,690 --> 00:33:07,980 STUDENT 6: Yeah. 814 00:33:07,980 --> 00:33:09,230 PROFESSOR: What about the art? 815 00:33:09,230 --> 00:33:11,406 Is it the UI art or the representational art 816 00:33:11,406 --> 00:33:12,280 that we talked about? 817 00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:12,946 STUDENT 6: Yeah. 818 00:33:12,946 --> 00:33:16,840 So it's mostly making sure the representational art 819 00:33:16,840 --> 00:33:20,310 aligns with-- what we think of it 820 00:33:20,310 --> 00:33:23,700 aligns with what our intended players think of it. 821 00:33:23,700 --> 00:33:26,204 And also just, like, we have so much art to produce. 822 00:33:26,204 --> 00:33:27,120 Like, getting it done. 823 00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:29,890 PROFESSOR: The gameplay is there, all the buttons work, 824 00:33:29,890 --> 00:33:31,600 it's just getting stuff onto that? 825 00:33:31,600 --> 00:33:34,016 STUDENT 6: Also the conversation UI, but our biggest risk, 826 00:33:34,016 --> 00:33:34,900 I think, is the art. 827 00:33:34,900 --> 00:33:35,860 STUDENT 7: It's mostly functional. 828 00:33:35,860 --> 00:33:38,767 There's a few bugs to iron out, but the structure's all there. 829 00:33:38,767 --> 00:33:39,701 PROFESSOR: OK. 830 00:33:39,701 --> 00:33:42,920 Last questions? 831 00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:44,317 Thank you. 832 00:33:44,317 --> 00:33:50,020 [APPLAUSE] 833 00:33:50,020 --> 00:33:50,520 All right. 834 00:33:50,520 --> 00:33:53,770 Any generalized feedback you want to give the whole class? 835 00:33:53,770 --> 00:33:54,380 PABLO: Yeah. 836 00:33:54,380 --> 00:33:58,330 You're now in a place where you have on one hand more 837 00:33:58,330 --> 00:34:01,040 to do than probably you think you can, 838 00:34:01,040 --> 00:34:04,200 but also more temptation to do more things, new things, 839 00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,860 explore new ways of representing, et cetera. 840 00:34:06,860 --> 00:34:08,909 It will be a balancing act. 841 00:34:08,909 --> 00:34:10,800 In order to get a passing grade you 842 00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:13,219 have to deliver something that works well enough. 843 00:34:13,219 --> 00:34:14,780 I'll let them define that. 844 00:34:14,780 --> 00:34:19,830 I invite you to remain inquisitive 845 00:34:19,830 --> 00:34:23,190 as to those simple-to-implement new ideas that can help 846 00:34:23,190 --> 00:34:26,600 something be really better. 847 00:34:26,600 --> 00:34:29,300 So don't try to do something really better that 848 00:34:29,300 --> 00:34:30,679 require starting from scratch. 849 00:34:30,679 --> 00:34:32,540 That'll be suicidal at this stage. 850 00:34:32,540 --> 00:34:34,829 But that balance is a balance that you 851 00:34:34,829 --> 00:34:37,120 will be experiencing throughout the rest of your lives, 852 00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:39,328 whether it's designing a video game for the Red Cross 853 00:34:39,328 --> 00:34:42,408 or designing, you know, rockets. 854 00:34:42,408 --> 00:34:43,949 Good luck with it all, and we'll have 855 00:34:43,949 --> 00:34:47,489 more personalized conversations after the half hour 856 00:34:47,489 --> 00:34:48,190 presentation. 857 00:34:48,190 --> 00:34:48,400 Thank you. 858 00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:48,889 PROFESSOR: Thank you. 859 00:34:48,889 --> 00:34:50,014 PABLO: And I'll be outside. 860 00:34:50,014 --> 00:34:51,190 You let me know when. 861 00:34:51,190 --> 00:34:53,874 PROFESSOR: We're done? 862 00:34:53,874 --> 00:34:56,040 Do you guys need to take a-- should we take a break? 863 00:34:56,040 --> 00:34:57,790 Should we just keep going? 864 00:34:57,790 --> 00:34:59,790 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] 10 minute [INAUDIBLE]. 865 00:34:59,790 --> 00:34:59,870 PROFESSOR: Yeah. 866 00:34:59,870 --> 00:35:01,828 So we're going to take a quick 10-minute break. 867 00:35:01,828 --> 00:35:03,190 It's 1:50 right now. 868 00:35:03,190 --> 00:35:05,360 So 2 o'clock. 869 00:35:05,360 --> 00:35:08,680 If you want to talk about and synthesize the feedback we just 870 00:35:08,680 --> 00:35:10,260 gave you, do that right now. 871 00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,170 On the presentations you just gave. 872 00:35:16,170 --> 00:35:17,510 You did really well. 873 00:35:17,510 --> 00:35:20,140 You knew the problems that you had, which is good, 874 00:35:20,140 --> 00:35:22,319 because I was worried on playtest that you might not 875 00:35:22,319 --> 00:35:24,860 know some of the issues that you were seeing in the playtest. 876 00:35:24,860 --> 00:35:25,485 So that's good. 877 00:35:25,485 --> 00:35:27,340 We're really glad to see that. 878 00:35:27,340 --> 00:35:29,740 The big challenge I see for your future 879 00:35:29,740 --> 00:35:34,990 is planning for fixing those-- responding to those problems 880 00:35:34,990 --> 00:35:35,949 that you know. 881 00:35:35,949 --> 00:35:37,740 There's just a lot of unforeseen stuff that 882 00:35:37,740 --> 00:35:40,000 can happen between now and the end of class, 883 00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:42,060 and that is what my talk is going to be about, 884 00:35:42,060 --> 00:35:46,950 is how to plan for disaster. 885 00:35:46,950 --> 00:35:49,910 And part of that is, just don't have the disaster. 886 00:35:49,910 --> 00:35:51,980 Cut it from the get go. 887 00:35:51,980 --> 00:35:55,930 So let me just make sure this is up. 888 00:35:55,930 --> 00:35:57,410 Next. 889 00:35:57,410 --> 00:35:57,910 All right. 890 00:35:57,910 --> 00:35:59,060 You have deadlines. 891 00:35:59,060 --> 00:36:00,840 This is the creative process. 892 00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:02,790 Deadlines happen at the end of the process. 893 00:36:02,790 --> 00:36:06,740 Hopefully work happens before the process. 894 00:36:06,740 --> 00:36:12,330 In this class your deadline is the last day of class, right? 895 00:36:12,330 --> 00:36:14,535 Double check your Stellar, you might be surprised. 896 00:36:17,230 --> 00:36:19,955 In the real world some of your deadlines 897 00:36:19,955 --> 00:36:21,160 are going to be demo days. 898 00:36:21,160 --> 00:36:21,750 E3. 899 00:36:21,750 --> 00:36:23,880 Anybody heard the term E3 demo? 900 00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:26,616 And soul-crushing-E3 demo, and studio 901 00:36:26,616 --> 00:36:30,440 closed after failure of E3 demo? 902 00:36:30,440 --> 00:36:33,600 Basically, show your game off to a bunch of press 903 00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:37,870 and hope it works. 904 00:36:37,870 --> 00:36:40,077 Usually that means don't allow any press to play it. 905 00:36:40,077 --> 00:36:41,160 You just play it for them. 906 00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:43,100 And by playing it for them, that might be just showing them 907 00:36:43,100 --> 00:36:45,170 the video while you manipulate the controller. 908 00:36:45,170 --> 00:36:47,150 You don't get to do that in this class. 909 00:36:47,150 --> 00:36:49,024 Other terms you might hear from the industry. 910 00:36:49,024 --> 00:36:50,420 Going gold. 911 00:36:50,420 --> 00:36:51,770 It's not just for disco. 912 00:36:51,770 --> 00:36:55,300 It is-- the Gold Master there on the left side, 913 00:36:55,300 --> 00:36:58,060 that's a game that went gold and actually was canceled. 914 00:36:58,060 --> 00:37:00,255 It got all the way to Gold Master, 915 00:37:00,255 --> 00:37:02,380 and then they said, no, we're not going to ship it. 916 00:37:02,380 --> 00:37:03,630 We're not going to produce it. 917 00:37:03,630 --> 00:37:04,950 It's just not good enough. 918 00:37:04,950 --> 00:37:05,970 That can happen. 919 00:37:05,970 --> 00:37:06,670 Ship dates. 920 00:37:06,670 --> 00:37:08,990 Back in the day games came in these things 921 00:37:08,990 --> 00:37:11,240 called boxes made out of cardboard with printed 922 00:37:11,240 --> 00:37:13,899 graphics that were in interesting-- Eidos 923 00:37:13,899 --> 00:37:15,690 would make them in these trapezoidal things 924 00:37:15,690 --> 00:37:17,880 so they wouldn't quite fit on the shelf. 925 00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:20,560 So you would see-- that's an Eidos product. 926 00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:23,290 Thief-- were you on this one, Thief, The Dark Project? 927 00:37:23,290 --> 00:37:24,180 SARA VERILLI: Yep. 928 00:37:24,180 --> 00:37:25,080 PROFESSOR: Yep. 929 00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:26,380 Tomb Raider as well. 930 00:37:26,380 --> 00:37:29,260 Again, you don't exactly have a boxed ship date, 931 00:37:29,260 --> 00:37:33,010 but you have a give us a playable version of the game 932 00:37:33,010 --> 00:37:34,920 ship date. 933 00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:36,840 So how much time do you have left? 934 00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:37,900 December 10. 935 00:37:37,900 --> 00:37:39,660 You have 17 days left between now 936 00:37:39,660 --> 00:37:42,850 and then to finish your game. 937 00:37:42,850 --> 00:37:46,070 Well, let's assume you don't work on Thanksgiving. 938 00:37:46,070 --> 00:37:48,254 Anybody going home to see family or anything? 939 00:37:48,254 --> 00:37:49,170 A good portion of you. 940 00:37:49,170 --> 00:37:52,447 Are you going to work while you're with your family? 941 00:37:52,447 --> 00:37:53,530 Maybe you're going to try. 942 00:37:53,530 --> 00:37:59,239 Maybe you're in a turkey coma, or veggie turkey coma for me. 943 00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:00,780 But what about the presentation week? 944 00:38:00,780 --> 00:38:02,930 So December 8 and 10, you're actually 945 00:38:02,930 --> 00:38:05,040 in class working on your presentations. 946 00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:09,160 Hopefully your game works by the start of class on December 8. 947 00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:10,179 Hopefully. 948 00:38:10,179 --> 00:38:12,220 We're actually going to recommend that you do not 949 00:38:12,220 --> 00:38:15,340 change your game on December 8 and December 10, 950 00:38:15,340 --> 00:38:16,770 and you do a thing we call "soak," 951 00:38:16,770 --> 00:38:18,110 which I'll talk about later. 952 00:38:18,110 --> 00:38:19,540 It's totally up to you to do it. 953 00:38:19,540 --> 00:38:20,990 I offer it every year. 954 00:38:20,990 --> 00:38:22,550 It's almost never taken. 955 00:38:22,550 --> 00:38:24,720 But I'm offering it. 956 00:38:24,720 --> 00:38:27,580 So actually, was that 13 days or was it really 30 hours? 957 00:38:27,580 --> 00:38:31,156 You've got 12-- this is a 12-hour-a-week course. 958 00:38:31,156 --> 00:38:33,780 I took out the time that you're actually spent here in lecture, 959 00:38:33,780 --> 00:38:34,904 that I'm stealing from you. 960 00:38:34,904 --> 00:38:35,440 Sorry. 961 00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:37,330 I like talking sometimes. 962 00:38:37,330 --> 00:38:39,190 So you really have less than 1 work week 963 00:38:39,190 --> 00:38:40,314 to get all this stuff done. 964 00:38:40,314 --> 00:38:43,150 So think about that when you're thinking about your projects. 965 00:38:43,150 --> 00:38:47,080 Can you do all this in one regular professional, 966 00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:50,000 less than 40 hour work week? 967 00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:53,101 So that's scary. 968 00:38:53,101 --> 00:38:54,350 How do you meet your deadline? 969 00:38:54,350 --> 00:38:56,830 Do you crunch or do you cut? 970 00:38:56,830 --> 00:38:58,945 Who's heard the word crunch before? 971 00:38:58,945 --> 00:39:01,130 Just raise your hand it you've heard it. 972 00:39:01,130 --> 00:39:01,826 All right. 973 00:39:01,826 --> 00:39:04,450 Raise your hand if you do crunch right now, if you are actually 974 00:39:04,450 --> 00:39:06,408 in the middle of crunch, not even on this class 975 00:39:06,408 --> 00:39:08,140 but in other classes. 976 00:39:08,140 --> 00:39:08,857 Yeah. 977 00:39:08,857 --> 00:39:10,690 As students, you already know how to crunch. 978 00:39:10,690 --> 00:39:11,620 You do this. 979 00:39:11,620 --> 00:39:14,370 This is your daily life. 980 00:39:14,370 --> 00:39:17,160 And it's expected in some cases, it's some problems 981 00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:18,610 with the system, guess what? 982 00:39:18,610 --> 00:39:21,040 The same problems in the game industry. 983 00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:24,030 There is a way to do crunch-- to do a viable crunch. 984 00:39:24,030 --> 00:39:26,380 And that's actually what next week is probably 985 00:39:26,380 --> 00:39:29,710 going to be for you, is your crunch week. 986 00:39:29,710 --> 00:39:31,930 So ways you can do crunch and ways crunch 987 00:39:31,930 --> 00:39:37,000 is viable in the actual, real world industry. 988 00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:38,940 You spend a limited time period in crunch. 989 00:39:38,940 --> 00:39:42,487 So if you hear about death marches, 990 00:39:42,487 --> 00:39:43,570 that's not a limited time. 991 00:39:43,570 --> 00:39:46,820 That can be months, years spent working 992 00:39:46,820 --> 00:39:52,760 80-hour days on some studios, unnamed, in Australia. 993 00:39:52,760 --> 00:39:54,660 We're recommending spending one sprint. 994 00:39:54,660 --> 00:39:58,452 If you do a planned sprint we say, in advance, 995 00:39:58,452 --> 00:40:00,160 that we are going to crunch on this week. 996 00:40:00,160 --> 00:40:03,181 That means we're going to spend that week picking up the slack 997 00:40:03,181 --> 00:40:04,680 and getting through a bunch of stuff 998 00:40:04,680 --> 00:40:06,210 and we're going to work a long period of time. 999 00:40:06,210 --> 00:40:07,030 And it's going to be awesome. 1000 00:40:07,030 --> 00:40:07,821 Because guess what? 1001 00:40:07,821 --> 00:40:08,800 It's voluntary. 1002 00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:10,010 It is team-driven. 1003 00:40:10,010 --> 00:40:12,270 We decided, as a team, to do this. 1004 00:40:12,270 --> 00:40:15,600 The management did not say, you are going to crunch right now. 1005 00:40:15,600 --> 00:40:17,582 And in fact, a lot of game industry would say, 1006 00:40:17,582 --> 00:40:18,540 that's not even crunch. 1007 00:40:18,540 --> 00:40:19,720 You're having too much fun. 1008 00:40:19,720 --> 00:40:20,980 That can't be crunch. 1009 00:40:20,980 --> 00:40:25,500 For them crunch is compulsory, unpaid over-time. 1010 00:40:25,500 --> 00:40:29,324 Three words that I despise. 1011 00:40:29,324 --> 00:40:31,365 So if you are going to crunch and it is voluntary 1012 00:40:31,365 --> 00:40:32,915 and you plan for it in advance, you 1013 00:40:32,915 --> 00:40:35,660 would follow it by deep soak. 1014 00:40:35,660 --> 00:40:40,310 Deep soak, in this case, means test, play, itemize bugs. 1015 00:40:40,310 --> 00:40:42,640 It means you are playing your game, 1016 00:40:42,640 --> 00:40:45,820 you are understanding every subtle nuance of the user 1017 00:40:45,820 --> 00:40:47,600 experience of your game. 1018 00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:50,490 You probably have a very good understanding of the programmer 1019 00:40:50,490 --> 00:40:53,707 experience of your game, of the artist, of the producer, 1020 00:40:53,707 --> 00:40:54,790 of the person on the team. 1021 00:40:54,790 --> 00:40:57,425 You know how your game ticks from your point of view. 1022 00:40:57,425 --> 00:40:59,800 But you don't yet know it from the players point of view, 1023 00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:01,690 even after focus testing, even after seeing 1024 00:41:01,690 --> 00:41:02,789 other players play it. 1025 00:41:02,789 --> 00:41:04,330 You probably haven't played your game 1026 00:41:04,330 --> 00:41:06,163 enough to really understand what's going on. 1027 00:41:06,163 --> 00:41:08,170 What it actually does from the get go. 1028 00:41:08,170 --> 00:41:10,850 So you play it a lot, you itemize bugs, 1029 00:41:10,850 --> 00:41:12,850 you prioritize bugs, you write bugs down, 1030 00:41:12,850 --> 00:41:14,800 but you don't actually fix them. 1031 00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:17,380 You just see what they are, see how bad they are, 1032 00:41:17,380 --> 00:41:21,051 decide whether or not afterwards you want to fix them or not. 1033 00:41:21,051 --> 00:41:21,550 All right. 1034 00:41:21,550 --> 00:41:23,770 So that's how you do crunch. 1035 00:41:23,770 --> 00:41:24,570 I give that to you. 1036 00:41:24,570 --> 00:41:25,920 You will probably do it. 1037 00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:27,130 That is OK. 1038 00:41:27,130 --> 00:41:28,420 Good luck. 1039 00:41:28,420 --> 00:41:29,720 But, advanced course. 1040 00:41:29,720 --> 00:41:32,610 If you want to cut features, this is how you cut features. 1041 00:41:32,610 --> 00:41:35,260 So from now until December 8, ask yourself, 1042 00:41:35,260 --> 00:41:37,939 can you ship your game right now? 1043 00:41:37,939 --> 00:41:39,730 That's part of the aspect of sprint, right? 1044 00:41:39,730 --> 00:41:41,350 At the end of a sprint you should 1045 00:41:41,350 --> 00:41:42,560 be able to ship your game. 1046 00:41:42,560 --> 00:41:43,540 It's a viable product. 1047 00:41:43,540 --> 00:41:46,040 I can send it over the wall, someone can play it, 1048 00:41:46,040 --> 00:41:49,020 and it is good and ready to go. 1049 00:41:49,020 --> 00:41:51,090 In order to do that-- and in this talk 1050 00:41:51,090 --> 00:41:53,232 I'm assuming that, in order to do this, 1051 00:41:53,232 --> 00:41:55,440 you're going to need to reduce the scope of your game 1052 00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:59,690 because you need to ship it soon. 1053 00:41:59,690 --> 00:42:01,900 So what can you cut? 1054 00:42:01,900 --> 00:42:05,260 Some developers say these are the only things you should cut. 1055 00:42:05,260 --> 00:42:08,290 Features that are not fun and features that 1056 00:42:08,290 --> 00:42:09,900 do not advance the game's goals. 1057 00:42:09,900 --> 00:42:11,360 So play the game a lot. 1058 00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:13,410 Decide whether or not those features are fun, 1059 00:42:13,410 --> 00:42:17,120 collect evidence for it, have a theory about what is fun 1060 00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:19,360 or what is not fun, identify those features 1061 00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:21,320 that go towards that theory and remove them. 1062 00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:23,359 Just don't even continue working on them. 1063 00:42:23,359 --> 00:42:25,150 In this case you're thinking about the game 1064 00:42:25,150 --> 00:42:27,275 from the idea of your player and your stakeholders. 1065 00:42:29,135 --> 00:42:31,510 These are basically features that if you spent more time, 1066 00:42:31,510 --> 00:42:34,090 it would not be time well-spent. 1067 00:42:34,090 --> 00:42:35,390 But there's some other ones. 1068 00:42:35,390 --> 00:42:37,848 There are features that are too big to be finished in time. 1069 00:42:37,848 --> 00:42:41,290 Really take a realistic look at your product backlog right now 1070 00:42:41,290 --> 00:42:44,260 and decide if you can finish it in time or not. 1071 00:42:44,260 --> 00:42:46,330 Could you cut those features? 1072 00:42:46,330 --> 00:42:47,760 Just give it a moment's thought. 1073 00:42:47,760 --> 00:42:50,030 Think about it. 1074 00:42:50,030 --> 00:42:52,020 Features that just don't work. 1075 00:42:52,020 --> 00:42:54,500 Why bother fixing something if it's just going 1076 00:42:54,500 --> 00:42:56,115 to stay broken in two weeks? 1077 00:42:56,115 --> 00:42:56,740 Can you cut it? 1078 00:42:56,740 --> 00:42:57,698 Can you just remove it? 1079 00:42:57,698 --> 00:42:59,320 Does it change the game or not? 1080 00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:00,980 Can you even fix these in time anyway? 1081 00:43:00,980 --> 00:43:02,438 You just have to look at it and you 1082 00:43:02,438 --> 00:43:05,600 have to analyze it and decide. 1083 00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:09,830 So how would you actually go ahead and do that? 1084 00:43:09,830 --> 00:43:12,780 Hopefully you can say yes to these things. 1085 00:43:12,780 --> 00:43:14,800 Is your product backlog currently prioritized 1086 00:43:14,800 --> 00:43:17,810 right now? 1087 00:43:17,810 --> 00:43:19,390 Did you estimate your features well? 1088 00:43:19,390 --> 00:43:21,223 So did you estimate the size and the time it 1089 00:43:21,223 --> 00:43:23,020 takes to create the features? 1090 00:43:23,020 --> 00:43:26,410 And did you create good blocks of work in your sprints? 1091 00:43:26,410 --> 00:43:28,820 And my guess is, probably not. 1092 00:43:28,820 --> 00:43:30,900 And that's OK. 1093 00:43:30,900 --> 00:43:34,140 We talked to you about Scrum, we talked to you about Agile. 1094 00:43:34,140 --> 00:43:36,050 The thing is, Scrum is not a process. 1095 00:43:36,050 --> 00:43:38,820 Scrum is people doing a process. 1096 00:43:38,820 --> 00:43:41,890 You could be the best person, the best programmer 1097 00:43:41,890 --> 00:43:44,380 in the world and be put onto a team, 1098 00:43:44,380 --> 00:43:46,890 and still have all the problems that you're having right 1099 00:43:46,890 --> 00:43:49,580 now because the team doesn't know each other that well. 1100 00:43:49,580 --> 00:43:51,980 That's one of the things we try to do on the first couple 1101 00:43:51,980 --> 00:43:53,634 projects, is get you used to working 1102 00:43:53,634 --> 00:43:55,050 with the other people in the class 1103 00:43:55,050 --> 00:43:57,133 so you can find people that you've compatible work 1104 00:43:57,133 --> 00:43:57,810 styles with. 1105 00:43:57,810 --> 00:43:59,570 So that when you're in project four 1106 00:43:59,570 --> 00:44:02,930 you have a chance at forming a good, solid team 1107 00:44:02,930 --> 00:44:04,180 and having some team dynamics. 1108 00:44:04,180 --> 00:44:06,096 And remember when I talked about team dynamics 1109 00:44:06,096 --> 00:44:08,040 earlier in the semester? 1110 00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:11,710 Would anybody say that they are in the performing mode? 1111 00:44:11,710 --> 00:44:15,094 Like, do you feel like you are performing well? 1112 00:44:15,094 --> 00:44:16,260 Do you have an engine going? 1113 00:44:16,260 --> 00:44:18,670 Do you see tasks get done? 1114 00:44:18,670 --> 00:44:21,651 Do they just fall off the list because, oh, that was done. 1115 00:44:21,651 --> 00:44:22,400 That was verified. 1116 00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:23,290 That was awesome. 1117 00:44:23,290 --> 00:44:24,365 Has that happened yet? 1118 00:44:27,179 --> 00:44:27,720 Probably not. 1119 00:44:27,720 --> 00:44:28,940 That's OK. 1120 00:44:28,940 --> 00:44:29,440 Yeah. 1121 00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:30,356 A lot of head-shaking. 1122 00:44:30,356 --> 00:44:30,940 That's OK. 1123 00:44:30,940 --> 00:44:33,950 So we need something else we can try out, 1124 00:44:33,950 --> 00:44:36,632 because that's not going to work. 1125 00:44:36,632 --> 00:44:38,090 And even in the ideal world, you're 1126 00:44:38,090 --> 00:44:39,215 still going to have to cut. 1127 00:44:39,215 --> 00:44:42,591 Like, developers cut features every day. 1128 00:44:42,591 --> 00:44:44,340 Those are the tools they have to use them, 1129 00:44:44,340 --> 00:44:47,790 but when those fail we have other tools. 1130 00:44:47,790 --> 00:44:50,730 So based on what I read from your project three, 1131 00:44:50,730 --> 00:44:52,260 some people think cutting features 1132 00:44:52,260 --> 00:44:54,220 means dropping features. 1133 00:44:54,220 --> 00:44:56,140 That's slightly different. 1134 00:44:56,140 --> 00:44:57,472 It's not exactly the same. 1135 00:44:57,472 --> 00:44:59,930 The difference between a cut feature and a dropped feature? 1136 00:44:59,930 --> 00:45:02,100 A cut feature has intention. 1137 00:45:02,100 --> 00:45:03,017 You've planned for it. 1138 00:45:03,017 --> 00:45:05,183 You're going to tie up loose ends around the feature 1139 00:45:05,183 --> 00:45:07,150 after you've removed it from the feature list. 1140 00:45:07,150 --> 00:45:10,890 You'll actually even delete the feature from your product 1141 00:45:10,890 --> 00:45:13,080 backlog, and feel really good about it, 1142 00:45:13,080 --> 00:45:15,820 and not have to ever worry about it again because it's gone. 1143 00:45:15,820 --> 00:45:16,880 It's no longer going to be in there. 1144 00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:18,110 Dropped features are those things 1145 00:45:18,110 --> 00:45:19,125 at the bottom of the backlog that 1146 00:45:19,125 --> 00:45:20,750 just don't get into the game at the end 1147 00:45:20,750 --> 00:45:22,900 and could cause major issues if they're 1148 00:45:22,900 --> 00:45:25,380 connected to other systems. 1149 00:45:25,380 --> 00:45:27,390 So how do you have that intention? 1150 00:45:27,390 --> 00:45:30,930 You think through the dependencies. 1151 00:45:30,930 --> 00:45:35,830 Scrum does not have a good tool for identifying dependencies. 1152 00:45:35,830 --> 00:45:38,320 It's actually one of its weakest points. 1153 00:45:38,320 --> 00:45:41,400 It assumes that, if you do all the other stuff 1154 00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:43,870 your dependencies will just fall into place because you've 1155 00:45:43,870 --> 00:45:45,640 created really good backlog items 1156 00:45:45,640 --> 00:45:47,319 and you've organized them well. 1157 00:45:47,319 --> 00:45:48,860 So this is one of those things where, 1158 00:45:48,860 --> 00:45:51,050 if you had a couple more weeks maybe 1159 00:45:51,050 --> 00:45:52,675 you would want to switch to waterfall 1160 00:45:52,675 --> 00:45:55,790 or go into a Gantt chart or figure out 1161 00:45:55,790 --> 00:45:58,675 a way to graph every little thing that's 1162 00:45:58,675 --> 00:45:59,550 going on in the game. 1163 00:45:59,550 --> 00:46:01,680 And I'm going to say, don't do that. 1164 00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:04,826 But think about that and get in that mindset. 1165 00:46:04,826 --> 00:46:07,200 So take a look at your code and backlog for dependencies. 1166 00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:11,020 And here's one really easy thought experiment to take. 1167 00:46:11,020 --> 00:46:13,390 look at your biggest unfinished feature 1168 00:46:13,390 --> 00:46:17,010 and just think what would happen if you just didn't do it. 1169 00:46:17,010 --> 00:46:23,159 So in one of the games I saw-- this team here. 1170 00:46:23,159 --> 00:46:23,950 One of these teams. 1171 00:46:23,950 --> 00:46:24,950 You two teams over here. 1172 00:46:24,950 --> 00:46:27,980 What's your biggest unfinished feature right now? 1173 00:46:27,980 --> 00:46:28,500 Either team. 1174 00:46:28,500 --> 00:46:30,120 Somebody just say it out loud. 1175 00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:32,090 Maybe Matt, while he's chewing. 1176 00:46:32,090 --> 00:46:35,148 Or somebody else. 1177 00:46:35,148 --> 00:46:38,070 AUDIENCE: Our time to gather all the clues in our endgame. 1178 00:46:38,070 --> 00:46:39,540 PROFESSOR: Time to gather all the clues in the endgame. 1179 00:46:39,540 --> 00:46:40,670 That's your biggest unfinished one? 1180 00:46:40,670 --> 00:46:42,691 What would happen if you just didn't do that? 1181 00:46:42,691 --> 00:46:45,400 AUDIENCE: There would be no purpose to the game. 1182 00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:46,010 PROFESSOR: OK. 1183 00:46:46,010 --> 00:46:47,550 [LAUGHTER] 1184 00:46:47,550 --> 00:46:49,440 So is it still the same game? 1185 00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:50,790 Not really. 1186 00:46:50,790 --> 00:46:52,540 Would the other features feel its absence? 1187 00:46:52,540 --> 00:46:53,480 Hells yes. 1188 00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:53,980 All right. 1189 00:46:53,980 --> 00:46:58,345 So trace your dependencies, take a look at that thing, 1190 00:46:58,345 --> 00:47:00,720 go down the line and see, what all the other systems that 1191 00:47:00,720 --> 00:47:02,090 are tied into it? 1192 00:47:02,090 --> 00:47:04,085 This is where graphing could be helpful. 1193 00:47:04,085 --> 00:47:05,990 A little mind map, node map. 1194 00:47:05,990 --> 00:47:09,540 If I wasn't crunching and actually made this presentation 1195 00:47:09,540 --> 00:47:12,120 this morning, I would have had that graph. 1196 00:47:12,120 --> 00:47:14,340 But can you identify the loose ends? 1197 00:47:14,340 --> 00:47:16,840 And then if you've cut those loose ends off of that feature, 1198 00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:20,107 is your primary feature usable, understandable, and polished? 1199 00:47:20,107 --> 00:47:22,190 You don't have to do this for every single feature 1200 00:47:22,190 --> 00:47:24,810 on your feature list, but identify one or two really 1201 00:47:24,810 --> 00:47:26,810 big ones and just do a little thought experiment 1202 00:47:26,810 --> 00:47:28,450 and see what would happen if they went away. 1203 00:47:28,450 --> 00:47:30,116 Because they're going to go away at some 1204 00:47:30,116 --> 00:47:31,970 point in the next week and a half. 1205 00:47:31,970 --> 00:47:36,027 So you've identified a feature and you're going to say, 1206 00:47:36,027 --> 00:47:37,360 we're going to cut this feature. 1207 00:47:37,360 --> 00:47:39,443 We're not going to drop it, we're going to cut it. 1208 00:47:39,443 --> 00:47:42,260 What exactly does that mean? 1209 00:47:42,260 --> 00:47:43,630 So think cut plus. 1210 00:47:43,630 --> 00:47:47,720 So cut the feature, replace it with a different, smaller 1211 00:47:47,720 --> 00:47:48,440 feature. 1212 00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:50,040 Key word there is smaller. 1213 00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:52,051 Based on new knowledge you know your game 1214 00:47:52,051 --> 00:47:53,800 better now than you knew it when you first 1215 00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:55,760 made that product backlog. 1216 00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:58,230 That fits a similar purpose. 1217 00:47:58,230 --> 00:47:59,464 This is an OK solution. 1218 00:47:59,464 --> 00:48:01,380 It takes a little bit of time and you actually 1219 00:48:01,380 --> 00:48:05,010 might be too late to do that right now. 1220 00:48:05,010 --> 00:48:08,830 An example could be, you've got a first person shooting game 1221 00:48:08,830 --> 00:48:10,530 and you have rocket launchers, but you 1222 00:48:10,530 --> 00:48:13,240 don't have animated missiles. 1223 00:48:13,240 --> 00:48:14,900 Cut the rocket launcher. 1224 00:48:14,900 --> 00:48:16,460 You have-- what else do you have? 1225 00:48:16,460 --> 00:48:17,460 You need another weapon. 1226 00:48:17,460 --> 00:48:18,626 You need another big weapon. 1227 00:48:18,626 --> 00:48:19,800 Maybe you have a ray gun. 1228 00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:21,434 Maybe you can already animate things 1229 00:48:21,434 --> 00:48:22,600 on top of another character. 1230 00:48:22,600 --> 00:48:25,070 So you have a ray gun that if you press the button, 1231 00:48:25,070 --> 00:48:27,510 anybody in front of the button has a little animation that 1232 00:48:27,510 --> 00:48:28,970 vaporizes and dies. 1233 00:48:28,970 --> 00:48:31,200 You've got a very similar feature going on. 1234 00:48:31,200 --> 00:48:32,410 It's a cool weapon. 1235 00:48:32,410 --> 00:48:34,824 It's damage heavy. 1236 00:48:34,824 --> 00:48:36,240 You don't need to do that animated 1237 00:48:36,240 --> 00:48:38,650 bullet, that animated missile, and you save yourself 1238 00:48:38,650 --> 00:48:39,670 some time. 1239 00:48:39,670 --> 00:48:41,705 And you haven't hurt the game. 1240 00:48:41,705 --> 00:48:44,080 The player doesn't even know that that wasn't even there. 1241 00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:45,770 You didn't give the player a rocket launcher 1242 00:48:45,770 --> 00:48:48,103 that didn't fire missiles, and just made people randomly 1243 00:48:48,103 --> 00:48:48,770 blow up. 1244 00:48:48,770 --> 00:48:52,390 You've given them something different and new and exciting. 1245 00:48:52,390 --> 00:48:54,540 Next one, cut and redesign. 1246 00:48:54,540 --> 00:48:57,650 So take the same feature and then shrink it. 1247 00:48:57,650 --> 00:48:59,890 Redesign it for a smaller scope. 1248 00:48:59,890 --> 00:49:02,010 Again, based on new knowledge. 1249 00:49:02,010 --> 00:49:04,660 I'm playing the new Pokemon right now. 1250 00:49:04,660 --> 00:49:09,280 Pokemon, that really outrageous, complex, matrix 1251 00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:11,340 of strength and weaknesses. 1252 00:49:11,340 --> 00:49:13,890 When you break it down it's rock, paper, scissors. 1253 00:49:13,890 --> 00:49:16,670 I'm trying to make a game and I want to out-Pokemon Pokemon. 1254 00:49:16,670 --> 00:49:18,810 I'm going to have modifiers for everything, 1255 00:49:18,810 --> 00:49:24,490 I'm going to have even longer lists of different enemy types. 1256 00:49:24,490 --> 00:49:26,280 Maybe I just need to go back to rock, 1257 00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:28,530 paper, scissors, do a thought experiment, 1258 00:49:28,530 --> 00:49:29,960 create a short little prototype. 1259 00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:31,020 That's one thing you can do right now 1260 00:49:31,020 --> 00:49:33,350 is you can create paper prototypes on your own. 1261 00:49:33,350 --> 00:49:36,164 You've got big enough teams that one person can say, let me do 1262 00:49:36,164 --> 00:49:38,080 a really quick paper prototype of that feature 1263 00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:39,450 to see what it would look like. 1264 00:49:39,450 --> 00:49:41,680 Let me look at all the previous features we have, 1265 00:49:41,680 --> 00:49:44,170 make sure it matches, and come up with a little paper 1266 00:49:44,170 --> 00:49:45,670 version of it and see, is that going 1267 00:49:45,670 --> 00:49:46,980 to fit the same thing or not? 1268 00:49:46,980 --> 00:49:48,140 And if it does, great. 1269 00:49:48,140 --> 00:49:50,149 You've saved yourself a ton of time. 1270 00:49:50,149 --> 00:49:52,690 [? Today in ?] content, as we saw in the presentations today. 1271 00:49:52,690 --> 00:49:55,570 Content is ginormous. 1272 00:49:55,570 --> 00:49:57,530 Churning through that is really hard. 1273 00:49:57,530 --> 00:49:59,720 Lastly, cut and amplify. 1274 00:49:59,720 --> 00:50:02,920 Take an already developed feature and make it better. 1275 00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:07,950 So did you promise 32 guns for your shooter? 1276 00:50:07,950 --> 00:50:09,390 Could 20 just be enough? 1277 00:50:09,390 --> 00:50:11,840 And then spend that time you have with those 20 guns 1278 00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:13,580 to make them better and more polished. 1279 00:50:13,580 --> 00:50:15,221 So I already went back to guns. 1280 00:50:15,221 --> 00:50:16,720 That's just where my head was today. 1281 00:50:19,260 --> 00:50:21,160 If you think, if you had one good, 1282 00:50:21,160 --> 00:50:27,390 really, awesome weapon-- double sawed-off shotgun in Quake, 1283 00:50:27,390 --> 00:50:28,210 maybe. 1284 00:50:28,210 --> 00:50:29,170 That was pretty cool. 1285 00:50:29,170 --> 00:50:30,700 I used that one a lot. 1286 00:50:30,700 --> 00:50:33,025 And then a bunch of poorly developed ones-- BFG. 1287 00:50:33,025 --> 00:50:35,490 I don't even understand why they even put that in there. 1288 00:50:35,490 --> 00:50:37,380 Was that in Quake or was it just in Doom? 1289 00:50:37,380 --> 00:50:37,660 AUDIENCE: Doom. 1290 00:50:37,660 --> 00:50:38,540 PROFESSOR: But either way, though. 1291 00:50:38,540 --> 00:50:39,700 You rarely saw it. 1292 00:50:39,700 --> 00:50:41,240 It was cool for one second. 1293 00:50:41,240 --> 00:50:43,990 Maybe if that was a hugely important, expensive thing, 1294 00:50:43,990 --> 00:50:46,040 maybe cut it and the player doesn't even feel it. 1295 00:50:48,281 --> 00:50:49,780 So in all three of these things when 1296 00:50:49,780 --> 00:50:51,905 we're cutting the feature what we're thinking about 1297 00:50:51,905 --> 00:50:53,840 is, what does the player see? 1298 00:50:53,840 --> 00:50:55,790 Does the player have-- what did I say? 1299 00:50:55,790 --> 00:50:57,530 Expected feedback. 1300 00:50:57,530 --> 00:51:00,119 If you drop a feature might the player 1301 00:51:00,119 --> 00:51:01,910 still expect some feedback that they're not 1302 00:51:01,910 --> 00:51:04,330 getting because that feature's no longer there? 1303 00:51:04,330 --> 00:51:05,917 If you cut it the player should never 1304 00:51:05,917 --> 00:51:07,000 know that it wasn't there. 1305 00:51:09,690 --> 00:51:11,770 Here's a game where they dropped features. 1306 00:51:11,770 --> 00:51:18,600 This is one of our favorite examples from 2003, Big Rigs. 1307 00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:21,670 Where's my mouse? 1308 00:51:21,670 --> 00:51:22,535 Anybody played it? 1309 00:51:22,535 --> 00:51:22,790 [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 1310 00:51:22,790 --> 00:51:23,480 -Hey, kids. 1311 00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:26,610 Strap yourself in for some action-packed racing. 1312 00:51:26,610 --> 00:51:28,420 It's Big Rigs. 1313 00:51:28,420 --> 00:51:32,100 18 wheels of thunder, and we got trucks. 1314 00:51:32,100 --> 00:51:34,070 Yeah, trucks. 1315 00:51:34,070 --> 00:51:35,820 Big Rigs. 1316 00:51:35,820 --> 00:51:37,500 Off-road traction. 1317 00:51:37,500 --> 00:51:40,670 More power for non-stop driving action. 1318 00:51:40,670 --> 00:51:41,820 Big Rigs. 1319 00:51:41,820 --> 00:51:43,570 PROFESSOR: It's Big Rigs off-road driving. 1320 00:51:43,570 --> 00:51:45,440 You can drive off the road. 1321 00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:46,760 -Who knows? 1322 00:51:46,760 --> 00:51:48,370 Big Rigs. 1323 00:51:48,370 --> 00:51:49,750 Never lose a race again. 1324 00:51:49,750 --> 00:51:52,076 You're always winner with Big Rigs. 1325 00:51:52,076 --> 00:51:54,450 PROFESSOR: You always win, every time you get through it. 1326 00:51:54,450 --> 00:51:55,252 There's no timer. 1327 00:51:55,252 --> 00:51:57,460 -Phasing molecular mechanics to pass through solids-- 1328 00:51:57,460 --> 00:51:57,930 PROFESSOR: Whoa! 1329 00:51:57,930 --> 00:51:59,096 - --so as not to interrupt-- 1330 00:51:59,096 --> 00:52:00,860 PROFESSOR: Is this the future? 1331 00:52:00,860 --> 00:52:04,300 -Nothing stands in your way when you're Big Rigs. 1332 00:52:04,300 --> 00:52:07,285 Rear-spinning tires with warp-drive velocity 1333 00:52:07,285 --> 00:52:08,969 for inter-dimensional exploring. 1334 00:52:08,969 --> 00:52:11,510 Leave the game behind and exceed the boundaries of existence! 1335 00:52:11,510 --> 00:52:13,520 PROFESSOR: This game shipped. 1336 00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:16,580 This game was put on a disk, was put in a box, 1337 00:52:16,580 --> 00:52:19,660 was delivered to your local game store and Walmart. 1338 00:52:19,660 --> 00:52:22,750 People bought it, I think. 1339 00:52:22,750 --> 00:52:24,893 -Big mother-fuckin' Rigs! 1340 00:52:24,893 --> 00:52:26,342 -Big Rigs. 1341 00:52:26,342 --> 00:52:27,310 [END PLAYBACK] 1342 00:52:27,310 --> 00:52:29,476 PROFESSOR: Yeah, that was advertised as the trailer. 1343 00:52:29,476 --> 00:52:32,330 I quickly found out it wasn't, but I kept it anyway. 1344 00:52:32,330 --> 00:52:33,260 Humor. 1345 00:52:33,260 --> 00:52:34,581 Oh, where's my mouse? 1346 00:52:34,581 --> 00:52:35,080 No! 1347 00:52:41,610 --> 00:52:44,710 [INAUDIBLE] speaker notes. 1348 00:52:44,710 --> 00:52:46,560 [INAUDIBLE] back. 1349 00:52:46,560 --> 00:52:48,331 Apologies. 1350 00:52:48,331 --> 00:52:48,830 There. 1351 00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:53,110 [INAUDIBLE] here, down there. 1352 00:52:53,110 --> 00:52:53,610 All right. 1353 00:52:53,610 --> 00:53:00,060 So that is the ultimate expression of dropped features. 1354 00:53:04,150 --> 00:53:06,670 And-- oh, and I forgot to copy this. 1355 00:53:06,670 --> 00:53:07,170 All right. 1356 00:53:07,170 --> 00:53:11,430 So another example of cut features. 1357 00:53:11,430 --> 00:53:12,346 This is The Sims 4. 1358 00:53:12,346 --> 00:53:14,470 This is a quote from the executive producer, Rachel 1359 00:53:14,470 --> 00:53:16,600 Franklin. 1360 00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:20,297 Basically what happened was, when the game shipped-- well, 1361 00:53:20,297 --> 00:53:21,880 right before the game shipped, players 1362 00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:24,580 identified that through whatever they 1363 00:53:24,580 --> 00:53:26,747 did-- I think through watching community forums, 1364 00:53:26,747 --> 00:53:29,330 listening to what the developers were talking about the game-- 1365 00:53:29,330 --> 00:53:33,960 they identified 89 features missing from The Sims 4. 1366 00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:37,620 89 features that were not in Sims 4 when it shipped. 1367 00:53:37,620 --> 00:53:40,147 How did they know about those features? 1368 00:53:40,147 --> 00:53:41,980 Well, they were in Sims 1, 2, and 3 but they 1369 00:53:41,980 --> 00:53:45,020 didn't put them in 4, so they should be in 4, right? 1370 00:53:45,020 --> 00:53:47,820 Basically, she says "I want to put everything we've ever 1371 00:53:47,820 --> 00:53:49,860 created in the last 14 years into a base game, 1372 00:53:49,860 --> 00:53:51,314 but we simply can't. 1373 00:53:51,314 --> 00:53:53,730 What we have done instead is to create an incredibly rich, 1374 00:53:53,730 --> 00:53:55,007 robust experience. 1375 00:53:55,007 --> 00:53:56,590 If we didn't build the core foundation 1376 00:53:56,590 --> 00:53:59,430 but I gave you pools, that wouldn't be the right thing 1377 00:53:59,430 --> 00:54:01,570 to do." 1378 00:54:01,570 --> 00:54:03,960 They didn't quite meet the player experience. 1379 00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:05,350 There could've been some things that-- maybe there 1380 00:54:05,350 --> 00:54:06,800 were some problems going on the production, 1381 00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:08,800 but they decided that they still needed a core game that 1382 00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:10,740 could work because they could always add some 1383 00:54:10,740 --> 00:54:11,977 of those features in later. 1384 00:54:11,977 --> 00:54:13,810 There are some people on the forums who say, 1385 00:54:13,810 --> 00:54:16,393 no, that's actually not going to be working in the game engine 1386 00:54:16,393 --> 00:54:18,835 because I'm the nerd on the internet knows everything 1387 00:54:18,835 --> 00:54:20,460 and I know you can't do that, developer 1388 00:54:20,460 --> 00:54:22,640 who actually made the game. 1389 00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:25,410 So that is a problem that they knew they were going to have. 1390 00:54:25,410 --> 00:54:27,010 They know that they have it when they ship the game. 1391 00:54:27,010 --> 00:54:28,690 They have to come up with a community response 1392 00:54:28,690 --> 00:54:29,550 to figure that out. 1393 00:54:29,550 --> 00:54:31,220 And actually, that's something we'll talk about next week when 1394 00:54:31,220 --> 00:54:32,810 it comes to community management, 1395 00:54:32,810 --> 00:54:35,018 is when you're creating this game and people find out 1396 00:54:35,018 --> 00:54:37,659 about this game, how do you then talk them down? 1397 00:54:37,659 --> 00:54:39,200 But actually, in the most part you'll 1398 00:54:39,200 --> 00:54:42,041 be talking about bringing them up. 1399 00:54:42,041 --> 00:54:42,540 All right. 1400 00:54:42,540 --> 00:54:44,362 So we're going to cut some features. 1401 00:54:44,362 --> 00:54:45,570 We're not going to drop them. 1402 00:54:45,570 --> 00:54:49,752 So who decides which features are going to cut? 1403 00:54:49,752 --> 00:54:51,210 Who decides what and when, and then 1404 00:54:51,210 --> 00:54:52,376 who's going to implement it? 1405 00:54:52,376 --> 00:54:54,680 How are we going to do this? 1406 00:54:54,680 --> 00:54:57,830 So the people who decide which features get cut usually 1407 00:54:57,830 --> 00:54:59,167 are the stakeholders. 1408 00:54:59,167 --> 00:55:00,750 In the professional world that's going 1409 00:55:00,750 --> 00:55:02,750 to be that executive producer. 1410 00:55:02,750 --> 00:55:05,200 For you that could be your client. 1411 00:55:05,200 --> 00:55:06,780 That could be your product owner, 1412 00:55:06,780 --> 00:55:08,640 if you have a product owner on your team, 1413 00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:11,930 if you have someone you consider a vision owner on your team, 1414 00:55:11,930 --> 00:55:12,950 it could be that person. 1415 00:55:12,950 --> 00:55:15,930 It could default down to producer or Scrum Master, 1416 00:55:15,930 --> 00:55:17,550 if that's the person we're saying 1417 00:55:17,550 --> 00:55:19,450 that we're following their lead, they're 1418 00:55:19,450 --> 00:55:21,480 going to make that decision. 1419 00:55:21,480 --> 00:55:23,277 It could be your game designer. 1420 00:55:23,277 --> 00:55:25,110 But it's going to be somebody on your teams. 1421 00:55:25,110 --> 00:55:26,568 One, maybe two people on your teams 1422 00:55:26,568 --> 00:55:30,339 who are coming up at least with the what and the when. 1423 00:55:30,339 --> 00:55:32,630 Not everybody on the team knows the schedule as well as 1424 00:55:32,630 --> 00:55:34,420 maybe the producer does. 1425 00:55:34,420 --> 00:55:37,510 But the who implements and how it's implemented-- that's 1426 00:55:37,510 --> 00:55:38,700 the entire team's job. 1427 00:55:38,700 --> 00:55:41,087 This is why we have those long, boring Scrum meetings 1428 00:55:41,087 --> 00:55:42,920 at the beginning and the end of each sprint. 1429 00:55:42,920 --> 00:55:44,586 It's because that's the time period when 1430 00:55:44,586 --> 00:55:48,000 we have all the team together to make these kinds of decisions. 1431 00:55:48,000 --> 00:55:51,420 It's definitely not the producer and Scrum Masters' role 1432 00:55:51,420 --> 00:55:54,317 to decide how you're going to cut that feature. 1433 00:55:54,317 --> 00:55:56,150 They're there to facilitate it and make sure 1434 00:55:56,150 --> 00:55:59,710 that everybody who's attached to that feature can talk about it, 1435 00:55:59,710 --> 00:56:01,550 can explain why, can give some argument, 1436 00:56:01,550 --> 00:56:02,466 can give some defense. 1437 00:56:04,900 --> 00:56:08,980 Rather than giving the entire team the need 1438 00:56:08,980 --> 00:56:11,640 to decide everything, one or two people 1439 00:56:11,640 --> 00:56:14,100 decide the initial part and then the whole team 1440 00:56:14,100 --> 00:56:19,180 focuses on just how we're going to cut those things. 1441 00:56:19,180 --> 00:56:21,070 And that's because how you implement 1442 00:56:21,070 --> 00:56:23,250 it requires knowledge of both code and content. 1443 00:56:23,250 --> 00:56:24,960 It's more than a feature list. 1444 00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:26,720 A feature list can't do this for you. 1445 00:56:26,720 --> 00:56:29,320 It can do the top, it can show you the what, but never the 1446 00:56:29,320 --> 00:56:31,690 how. 1447 00:56:31,690 --> 00:56:32,190 All right. 1448 00:56:32,190 --> 00:56:33,810 Last little section. 1449 00:56:33,810 --> 00:56:36,860 So you were working on a feature and your feature was cut. 1450 00:56:36,860 --> 00:56:40,242 You spent a lot of time on that feature. 1451 00:56:40,242 --> 00:56:41,825 Your roll was to implement networking. 1452 00:56:41,825 --> 00:56:44,560 And this is actually an example from two years ago. 1453 00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:45,180 But was cut. 1454 00:56:45,180 --> 00:56:49,770 In that case, it wasn't cut because of these things. 1455 00:56:49,770 --> 00:56:50,860 I don't want to cut it. 1456 00:56:50,860 --> 00:56:52,026 I want to see this finished. 1457 00:56:52,026 --> 00:56:54,080 I put some commitment into this thing, dammit. 1458 00:56:54,080 --> 00:56:56,650 I want to see this all the way through. 1459 00:56:56,650 --> 00:56:58,140 I feel guilty about cutting it. 1460 00:56:58,140 --> 00:57:00,450 I really let my team down. 1461 00:57:00,450 --> 00:57:05,010 I was just working on networking the entire semester, 1462 00:57:05,010 --> 00:57:06,890 and it's not going to make it into the game. 1463 00:57:06,890 --> 00:57:09,034 What have I been doing? 1464 00:57:09,034 --> 00:57:10,200 I feel sad about cutting it. 1465 00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:10,790 It's not fair. 1466 00:57:10,790 --> 00:57:12,300 How dare you cut my feature? 1467 00:57:12,300 --> 00:57:16,240 You're going to see a lot of that, if you haven't already. 1468 00:57:16,240 --> 00:57:17,449 But that's OK. 1469 00:57:17,449 --> 00:57:18,990 One thing to keep in mind when you're 1470 00:57:18,990 --> 00:57:20,698 cutting a feature-- and this is one thing 1471 00:57:20,698 --> 00:57:23,330 that we told that person-- was, your work needed 1472 00:57:23,330 --> 00:57:28,700 to happen because otherwise you wouldn't know that we needed 1473 00:57:28,700 --> 00:57:30,060 to know about your work. 1474 00:57:30,060 --> 00:57:31,880 You described this better, by the way. 1475 00:57:33,745 --> 00:57:36,120 SARA VERILLI: I'm trying to remember exactly what I said, 1476 00:57:36,120 --> 00:57:37,730 but it's something to the effect of, 1477 00:57:37,730 --> 00:57:40,150 sometimes the work that doesn't make it into the game 1478 00:57:40,150 --> 00:57:43,190 had to happen anyway because you had 1479 00:57:43,190 --> 00:57:45,060 to do the work to explore networking 1480 00:57:45,060 --> 00:57:47,110 to find out if it wouldn't work or not. 1481 00:57:47,110 --> 00:57:49,190 Just like you had to do the work to explore 1482 00:57:49,190 --> 00:57:51,890 several other features that did go into the game. 1483 00:57:51,890 --> 00:57:55,044 But you didn't know that the-- I don't 1484 00:57:55,044 --> 00:57:56,960 know-- you didn't know which of those features 1485 00:57:56,960 --> 00:57:58,797 were going to work out well. 1486 00:57:58,797 --> 00:58:00,630 But you were hoping that some of them would. 1487 00:58:00,630 --> 00:58:02,870 Some of them did, some of them didn't. 1488 00:58:02,870 --> 00:58:05,355 The fact that one particular feature-- the one 1489 00:58:05,355 --> 00:58:08,510 that you worked on-- is not a reflection on you. 1490 00:58:08,510 --> 00:58:09,410 Not at all. 1491 00:58:09,410 --> 00:58:11,780 It's a reflection on the game, and the project 1492 00:58:11,780 --> 00:58:12,830 needs to go forward. 1493 00:58:12,830 --> 00:58:13,880 PROFESSOR: Absolutely. 1494 00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:15,050 So yeah. 1495 00:58:15,050 --> 00:58:17,691 Work that gets cut is never wasted work. 1496 00:58:17,691 --> 00:58:19,190 And that's actually a problem I have 1497 00:58:19,190 --> 00:58:21,480 when game developers do their postmortems 1498 00:58:21,480 --> 00:58:24,274 and post in the Gamasutra is they always talk about it as 1499 00:58:24,274 --> 00:58:25,190 if it was wasted work. 1500 00:58:25,190 --> 00:58:27,606 But really, again, they wouldn't have had that information 1501 00:58:27,606 --> 00:58:28,990 had they tried it. 1502 00:58:28,990 --> 00:58:31,370 Work well-cut is exploratory work. 1503 00:58:31,370 --> 00:58:34,470 It means that you cut it early enough that it was exploratory. 1504 00:58:34,470 --> 00:58:36,225 You got your feelers around it. 1505 00:58:36,225 --> 00:58:37,600 You figured out that was probably 1506 00:58:37,600 --> 00:58:40,141 a direction you didn't want to go into, and you pulled back. 1507 00:58:40,141 --> 00:58:41,890 And actually you did that in the beginning 1508 00:58:41,890 --> 00:58:43,460 with your paper prototypes. 1509 00:58:43,460 --> 00:58:46,220 I don't think your games now actually are 1510 00:58:46,220 --> 00:58:48,410 one-to-one relationships to those paper prototypes 1511 00:58:48,410 --> 00:58:50,760 you created at the beginning of this project. 1512 00:58:50,760 --> 00:58:53,270 And you threw those away, and it was OK. 1513 00:58:53,270 --> 00:58:55,570 So why is this important? 1514 00:58:55,570 --> 00:58:59,000 Because the team is more important than the product, 1515 00:58:59,000 --> 00:59:02,000 which is, unfortunately, more important than you. 1516 00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:05,520 But that's OK, because the team equals you 1517 00:59:05,520 --> 00:59:06,970 plus others in the same situation. 1518 00:59:06,970 --> 00:59:08,386 You are actually part of the team. 1519 00:59:08,386 --> 00:59:09,830 So just keep that in mind. 1520 00:59:09,830 --> 00:59:13,130 This is where I go to my Goodfellas-- was it Goodfellas? 1521 00:59:13,130 --> 00:59:17,230 There's no I in team, baseball bat? 1522 00:59:17,230 --> 00:59:18,271 You are on a team. 1523 00:59:18,271 --> 00:59:19,520 Everyone's contributing to it. 1524 00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:21,687 Everyone's doing good work for it. 1525 00:59:21,687 --> 00:59:23,770 All right. so that's my spiel on cutting features. 1526 00:59:23,770 --> 00:59:26,860 Here is my-- what I'd like to do on Wednesday. 1527 00:59:26,860 --> 00:59:28,730 So Wednesday is going to be a short class. 1528 00:59:28,730 --> 00:59:31,511 We're just meeting from 1:00 to 2:00. 1529 00:59:31,511 --> 00:59:34,010 You'll have the remainder of the time to work in your group, 1530 00:59:34,010 --> 00:59:37,510 in your teams you as you like, but if you want to take off, 1531 00:59:37,510 --> 00:59:39,294 you can take off. 1532 00:59:39,294 --> 00:59:40,710 What we are going to do-- and it's 1533 00:59:40,710 --> 00:59:43,960 going to be me, Phillip, and Drew, because unfortunately 1534 00:59:43,960 --> 00:59:47,260 Sara won't be here-- is we're going 1535 00:59:47,260 --> 00:59:50,510 to meet with each of your teams individually for about five, 1536 00:59:50,510 --> 00:59:52,470 seven minutes tops. 1537 00:59:52,470 --> 00:59:55,680 What we'd like to do is look at an updated vision statement. 1538 00:59:55,680 --> 00:59:58,200 So between now and then take a look at the vision statement 1539 00:59:58,200 --> 01:00:00,480 you turned into Stellar, compare it 1540 01:00:00,480 --> 01:00:04,080 to the game you have right now, and modify it. 1541 01:00:04,080 --> 01:00:06,424 The vision statement is your publisher contract with us. 1542 01:00:06,424 --> 01:00:08,590 That vision statement that you actually finally turn 1543 01:00:08,590 --> 01:00:11,170 in on December 10 with your game, 1544 01:00:11,170 --> 01:00:13,370 is the thing that we are judging your game by. 1545 01:00:13,370 --> 01:00:14,930 If your game has all the features 1546 01:00:14,930 --> 01:00:18,867 that are described in that vision statement, then aces. 1547 01:00:18,867 --> 01:00:20,450 If you created a vision statement that 1548 01:00:20,450 --> 01:00:22,120 doesn't have the features are in the game, 1549 01:00:22,120 --> 01:00:24,130 or if you don't describe the features well in the vision 1550 01:00:24,130 --> 01:00:25,970 statement then we're going to use that 1551 01:00:25,970 --> 01:00:28,160 as an understanding of what could have gone wrong 1552 01:00:28,160 --> 01:00:30,082 with that game. 1553 01:00:30,082 --> 01:00:32,040 This should be a really quick thing you can do. 1554 01:00:32,040 --> 01:00:33,990 You can probably do this in five minutes today with your team. 1555 01:00:33,990 --> 01:00:35,920 You have everybody here right now. 1556 01:00:35,920 --> 01:00:39,020 You just had your presentations about your products. 1557 01:00:39,020 --> 01:00:43,340 So if you can take five minutes today, reassess your vision 1558 01:00:43,340 --> 01:00:45,939 statement, take a look at your product backlog, change it. 1559 01:00:45,939 --> 01:00:47,230 We're going to talk about that. 1560 01:00:47,230 --> 01:00:48,646 You can re-turn that in to Stellar 1561 01:00:48,646 --> 01:00:51,982 or you can bring in a paper version on Wednesday, 1562 01:00:51,982 --> 01:00:53,440 so long as we can see it when we're 1563 01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:55,150 sitting with you on Wednesday. 1564 01:00:55,150 --> 01:00:57,670 That's all we ask. 1565 01:00:57,670 --> 01:01:00,290 And again, like I said earlier, plan 1566 01:01:00,290 --> 01:01:03,760 as if nothing is being done over Thanksgiving, just in case. 1567 01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:07,380 If work happens over Thanksgiving, cool. 1568 01:01:07,380 --> 01:01:08,350 You did good. 1569 01:01:08,350 --> 01:01:10,980 That's bonus work. 1570 01:01:10,980 --> 01:01:12,646 So just keep that in mind. 1571 01:01:12,646 --> 01:01:15,780 Any questions? 1572 01:01:15,780 --> 01:01:16,410 All right. 1573 01:01:16,410 --> 01:01:18,710 Pablo is back in the room. 1574 01:01:18,710 --> 01:01:22,050 And you're working on your teams for the rest of the day. 1575 01:01:22,050 --> 01:01:23,656 Thank you. 1576 01:01:23,656 --> 01:01:28,850 [INTERPOSING VOICES]