Fourth Meeting, Nov 4th, week 2

This meeting I got help importing the eclipse project and got it to work with Daniels help.

We also formalized:

• Where we communicate: slack (but a few of us needed to get used to using slack , not having used it before)
• How often we meet? The lectures, plus 1 or 2 additional meetings per week
• Where we keep information? Drive

--> most of these things we'd already started doing, it was just good to really formalize it, that this is how we did those things.

The week before I had thought about whether we needed a formal project leader or not. I felt that it would be easier to formalize who's responsibility it was to organize what to do, and make related decisions, but proposed team leader instead of project leader, because it felt more accurate, and I still wanted to code, and I felt more comfortable with "team leader" than "project leader", which felt a little pompous.

The others thought it was a good idea that I be team leader, since I'd already started organizing, doing a timeline, taking notes, planning meetings etc.

This way, it felt easier to delegate things to do, make lists and make we sure we do them equally, without feeling like I was maybe overstepping my boundaries and stepping on toes. Even if no one felt that way, it's still easier to have a clear OK from the rest of the group.

During this meeting we also started planning the first presentation, the First Pitch.

I copied the template and we divided up the pages to do between each other.

The Time Plan

Click on the picture to get a better look at our time plan!

Third Meeting, Nov 2nd, week 1

During this third meeting, we had the opportunity to ask Björn, the course leader, about our target group question, whether it's possible to develop a product for "everyone" or not.

The following things were lifted in that discussion:

• Use situations with phone games and PC are very different
• Economics are also very different (ads in game for phone for example, but not the same for PC games)
• Uncommon combination
• More common to first release on one platform, then on phone later
• Can be cool: 2 very different revenue streams
• Market plan very different
• Some people could exist on both platforms, but would they buy it twice? Probably not. (or you get it free on the other?)
• Just because we can do it technically doesn’t mean we should.
• Not compromise too early, make first release as good as possible (If they can share platform with as little addition as possible, maybe)

Based on this discussion, we talked a bit more, and decided to develop for PC first, with the main target group "people like us".

At the end of this meeting we planned the next meeting date, and what things we needed to do till then, and divided these thing between us, in the following way:

• State of the art (Conrad + Benjamin, Antoine)
• Set up of Eclipse project + github (Daniel)
• Prepare story line/clone types/level brainstorming (Alexander + Benjamin, Antonio)
• Look into time plan and milestones (Emmeli)

At this point I added the presentation plan to the timeline, improved and divided up what we had already written the day before in more detailed and organized categories.

During this first week, I took it upon myself to organize the group work, and document it, which I had also already started doing. Not because I think the others couldn't do it, however maybe I had a little more experience and felt a little more at ease with taking charge of it this early. And I didn't want to wait too long with starting these things, because the sooner, the better.

Also, Conrad who had expressed interest in project leading also has some design interests, which I think will be needed later. And since I've worked with him before, we have a pretty good understanding of how we work together. He knows what I'm good at and I know what he's good at, so I knew he would trust my judgment.

Additionally, I know the reason it might be slow at the start might be that we don't really know where we have each other yet, but since this project is to be done in such a short time, we really needed to get everything up and running quickly, and that includes how the group works internally.

One thing I thought about was if I we needed to define roles such as project leader, or if we could work without it, and just have an informal leader or project organizer. I decided to see how it worked during the first week without formal roles, and keep thinking about it.

Second Meeting, Nov 1st, week 1

We decided at the end of the first meeting to meet again two days later.

During this meeting, we discussed game ideas some more, and I took notes again.

This time, we had a few more versions of games:

• Still the space strategy game
• But also a space puzzle game
• And a clone platform game, where f. ex. you'd need to jump over a gap, create pile of dead clones to do it!

After discussing some we needed to make some decisions so that we could focus our efforts and ideas, meaning we chose some ideas and excluded others.

• We would not make a 2D game
• We chose the clone puzzle platform, with different types of clones doing different things when they die. Mostly because we all liked that idea best, and it had an interesting story, that Alex had concocted!

This is the first bricks of the first of the four pillars that we are required to have for this course project, the Game Concept.

Another pillar is the Technical Platforms:

• We've decided to make a 2D game, and we will use Box2D and LibGdx for this, and develop in Java (which is a language all six of us know).
• We discussed what platforms we'd like to develop for, and decided on PC and Android

The third pillar is the Business Plan, which we discussed shortly, saying that we would release the game on steam and google play.

The last pillar is the Target Group.

Here we talked about clones playing such a big role in the game might make it less suitable for young children, maybe 12+ would be a good age.

We also determined that the the target groups for PC and android might be very different. On android the players might be younger and older, while on PC the players wold be "our age", and these groups might have different motivations to play the game. You usually spend less time per game on the phone than on the computer for example.

At this point, we ran into an interesting discussion:

Everyone can play the game, but should we develop for everyone?

I have just started my master in Interactive Media Technology, and started learning in more detail about target groups and UX and such. So I had just learned that it can be very hard to develop for "everyone". As I've understood it, it's easier to make decisions when the intended target group is smaller, even if, in the end a larger group might use the product.

But not all my group members agreed, since the game would work the same for PC as for android, we just needed to think about the way to control the game would work for android too.

We discussed a bit, but then we decided to ask Björn, the course teacher for input and how we should think about this.

Before the meeting I had created a timeline. During the meeting I insisted that we discussed what was realistic to have finished when, to get a first version of a time plan to follow. In it we have planned activities, a few milestones for the game, for the GDD, as well as deadlines from the course. Later on I also added the dates for the various presentations.

First Meeting, Oct 30th, week 1

Week 1, the week the course started. There was a first lecture and all the students were assigned to groups of about six people.

So, during this first instance of the course, I met my group members.

We presented ourselves to each other and talked shortly about our respective skills and interests relevant for this course. We have two people who have worked with 3D and game design quite a bit before, Alex and Daniel. Daniel with an extra interest in physics engines. Two people who program but haven't really worked much with game design , as I understood it, Benjamin and Antonio. Two persons who are a bit more on the project leading side of the spectrum, one of which is me, Emmeli, and the other with an additional interest in front-end design, Conrad. However we all come from a programming and coding background!

We also started brainstorming an idea, to find out what we might want to do!

We talked about VR, 3D and 2D, the pros an cons, the reasons why to use one or the other.

We talked about a strategic game, set in space, Space Risk. And we talked about not needing to use VR if it didn't really add much to the game experience, except maybe a cool gimmick.

There's also the uncertainty of the VR market. Will it really take off?

We also set up a google drive to use, and a slack, with which to communicate.

I took it upon myself to do that, and I'd also taken notes during this first meeting, which I put in the drive right away!