This was a 12 week project with a team comprised of 4 students. The aim of the project was to come up with an innovative game idea and create a working prototype/slice of the game.
Role
Project Manager
Save the Show is a VR rhythm game where the player plays as a general understudy on a 60’s musical variety show and must blend into cast and crew roles without breaking the rhythm of the show.
Design Process
The ideation phase began with each of the team member sharing the log lines of the games they wanted to design. Based on the log line and features we drew a comparison chart to chose the game we want to work on.
We also used RAD to develop paper prototypes of each games to understand the world and the rules of play for the game. We also came up with Core loop for all the games ideas we had.
Once we had our top two choices we drew some of the charts to help us decide the game.Based on our test we decided to go for a Tower defence game.
Inverse Empathy Map. An Inverse Empathy Map focuses on the intended experience the customer is going to get while playing the game.
Player Motivation Map. This is to find out our customer segment or who will be playing our game or how many types of players can play our game.
My Contribution
Scrum Master
Weekly standup. The team decided to meet once a week to discuss our progress. We created a Kanban board and assigned tasks and prioritized them in the level of importance.
Ideation Exercises. Following a scrum methodology means lots of iteration and we as a group constantly had to do this whether it was our professor’s requirements or our lack of technical abilities.
Moderation of Meetings. I would make sure each and every person has a say in the design process.
Project Manager
Client Communication. In our project our client was our professor, I made sure he gets all the necessary updates regarding the game development. I scheduled and led all the meetings with our professor.
Conflict Management. There were times where some members would not agree with others and would create their own versions. I made sure everyone is on the same page and everyone is following the same set path and tasks.
Project Documentation. I worked with one of my peer to work on the game design document.
Challenges
Change/Pivot
During the mid of our project we were given a pivot change that we would have incorporate in our game. Our game became from first person VR shooting game to the polka or 70’s music show game.
We as a team worked and developed the “Save the Show”game where the player acts as an understudy. We used our previous work without changing much in our game.