Playtesting, playtesting, playtesting
Hello, I’m Dana Hsiao, a Masters of Engineering in Computer Science student at Cornell University – and a Wellesley College alumna. All our SIP teams have been hard at work in the early production stage of our games.
I am the producer of Team Apple, and we’re making a “merge game,” a game is where you take two like things and combine them into one better thing (eg 2048, Cat Condo, Merge Tower Bots). In our game, you are in command of a legion of cute critters as they battle back an invasion of demons from hell.
One of the most interesting things we have done at SIP was to show our whiteboxes and early production builds to both young kids and professional game developers. This has given us a variety of feedback on our game to inform our decisions moving forward.
Earlier this month during TouchTomorrow, an event to introduce STEM to young kids, we showed our whiteboxes to a bunch of kids. While they couldn’t give us technical game development advice, we could observe their behavior to infer how good our game was. For Team Apple’s game in particular, we noticed that kids would play the game for long periods of time and actually had to be dragged away by their parents!
Recently, we got to tour WB Games Boston, the Indie Game Collective, and Demiurge Studios. In addition to looking around their studios, we were able to playtest our current production builds alongside our whitebox with the developers working there. We got a wide range on input on our art style and how to make our game better. It was interesting to see the range of suggestions, from making our game simpler, to keeping it like it was, to making it more strategic. We deliberated over our notes the next day and decided on a slight change in how our game will work, which we are busy working on right now.
I’m honored to work with the great artists and programmers on my team and in SIP. It’s been a blast working with them, and I’m looking forward to seeing how everyone’s games come out!
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MassDiGI is pleased to be a sponsor of Boston GameLoop. For more information, click here.
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Join us on August 8 from 1-4p at the Barrett Center for our annual Open House! Free, fun and open to all. RSVP here.
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MassDiGI is pleased to be a sponsor of NarraScope. For more information, click here.
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Beginnings
By Griffin Beels, Brown University ’21
Hi! I am a rising junior at Brown University, participating in SIP, MassDiGI’s Summer Innovation Program. We’ve been in session since the middle of May, so we’re starting to get into the meat of game production!
Within these last three weeks, we’ve been moving very fast-paced (while having ample opportunities to ask questions), and truly have accomplished a lot already.
Griffin Beels celebrating National Donut Day during SIP19.
First, we split off into groups — all of the developers were placed on teams for the rest of the summer. I’m on Team Cherry, and am actually the producer! This means that I seek to coordinate within our team to determine how we want to progress. That is, asking questions about our goals or knowledge, and using that to recognize an ideal path. I have an extraordinary amount to learn, and I hope to improve as much as I possibly can as a producer this summer, to make sure my teammates and I are working together with synergistic efficiency.
Next, we determined as a group what type of game we wanted to pursue. Our group chose to look at “endless runners,” or games wherein you keep playing forever until you hit an obstacle (e.g., Jetpack Joyride, Temple Run, Subway Surfers). We conducted market research to construct a taxonomy of endless runners, which was in essence a massive guideline of what goes into an endless runner.
After we constructed our taxonomy, we constructed 3 “white boxes,” or essentially rough drafts of a few ideas that we had — and got to present our white boxes to elementary school students in the Worcester area, which was an awesome experience. One student in particular made me smile extremely hard when he celebrated after making it to the next platform in one of our white boxes.
Finally, we have officially moved onto production; as such, we are refining our code bases, art styles, and designs to start building an awesome game from the ground up.
Everyone’s incredible, and I am super excited to not only work with such talented artists and programmers, but also get to know everyone and learn from them! I hope the summer keeps being great!
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Join us as we take part in a panel discussing “Esports & Gaming: Strategies & Opportunities for Entrepreneurs.” RSVP here.
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MassDiGI, in collaboration with Becker College and the New England Council, will be hosting a half-day discussion on the “Future of Work” featuring Cong. James P. McGovern and panels of academic and business leaders. Invitation only.
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