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TEJ CHAJED: I'm Tej, I'm a grad
student in computer science,

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and I worked with a team of
eight on a game called Snap.

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All of us were course six
majors in computer science.

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We created a game called
Snap, which our client,

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who is from the Red Cross, he
presented us with this game

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in class.

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The game works where
you both come up

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with words, two players
come up with words,

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and whenever you
see the same word

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you snap and you get a point.

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So our task was to create a
digital version of this game,

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both to make the
game more engaging

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and also to help them
collect data on what words

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people were submitting, because
it's sort of a free association

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game and helps them get a
sense of what people think

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about a complex topic.

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So for Snap we actually
had a concrete game

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that the client gave us
and we knew exactly what

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project we'd be working on.

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Snap is also a little
bit different in

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that it's a much more technical
game, because we're not

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coming up with sprites, we're
not coming up with a story.

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It's quite bare bones
in terms of interface.

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And so we had a much more
standard coding project

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for our game.

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But at the same time, there
were game design aspects

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to what we had to do.

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We still had to think about
how to go beyond what we played

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in class and port over the
game to a digital version that

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will still be engaging
and didn't rely too much

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on the human interaction,
the face to face interaction.

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So at first we actually
thought that our game

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would be much more
restrictive, because we thought

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that the clients had a lot
of existing ideas about how

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the game should be played and
what works well for getting

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good feedback out of people.

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As we went on, we were
pleasantly surprised

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to find out that we actually
had a lot more creative freedom

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than we thought.

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And really, they
just wanted something

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that resembled the original game
and accomplish what we needed,

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which was to get
people to give words

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and say what they were thinking.

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So that was really nice for
us to be able to really think

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of what we wanted to.

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At the same time
though, the client

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was interested in using the game
much earlier than we expected.

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The goal for all the
projects is that they

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remain open and
available for people

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to see over the next month.

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We've actually been running the
game in the past couple weeks.

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And that has also
required some effort

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on our part to do exactly
what the client needs

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for their specific
runs in the past week.

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So traditionally,
this course does not

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allow people to use
networking, because it

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tends to be very buggy.

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It tends to be something
that if it doesn't work,

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simply makes the whole
game fall over flat.

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And we decided to violate
this rule very early on.

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The rules are all
suggestions, after all.

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And we were confident in
our ability to do this,

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partly because we had
a lot of experience

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with networking, with
distributed systems.

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I actually work in
distributed systems.

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And we also were experienced
with the technologies

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that we were using,
which definitely helped.

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I think that the learning
curve for those technologies

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was a little bit
more than we could

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have done in these eight weeks.

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So this course is nominally
about creating video games,

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but in reality, as the
instructors admitted,

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it's about project management.

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And I think that the course does
a really good job of teaching

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you project
management by example,

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by forcing you to
actually do it.

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And I think that's
why it's structured

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as four games as opposed
to one big game, which

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is what you might expect.

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And I think that that
was really useful for us

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to learn project management.

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Game development was
a nice side benefit,

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but I don't think we learned
a lot of game design.

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I think we just tried
it and mostly we

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were learning, how do
you manage a project,

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how do you manage
a software project?

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Games are a little bit different
in that the goal is fun and not

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so much coming from a client.

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The last project
notwithstanding, mostly games

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are about you want to
create something fun.

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I think the biggest
challenge for us in Snap

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was getting people engaged,
getting our team engaged

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in the project.

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There's a lot of other
classes that people are taking

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and this is not necessarily
the highest priority

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on everybody's list.

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And that was something that
you really have to work around.

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You really have to find ways to
get people engaged in the topic

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and get people to
contribute where

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they can in the number of
hours that they have available.

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So I don't know how
completely successfully we

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were at getting people to
contribute as many hours

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as we needed, but
definitely part of it

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was making sure the
tasks were very clear,

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so that not everybody was
thinking about the whole game,

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but instead could think
about their specific tasks

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and what they need
to do on their part.

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And that was part of what
the project management was,

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was making sure that people
have the information they need

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to do the tasks that they need
to get done without thinking

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about the whole project.