Maker Faire Reflection

Maker Faire 2015 Reflection

Our showcase at Maker Faire was better than I expected. I did not know we would have two monitors and three laptops there for people to play our game. I was also surprised at the game controllers use in allowing people to use the bigger monitors to play our game from the front and being relatively free, instead of having to traverse their way to the back, where all the wires and people were. I believe we were successful in (a) efficiently showcasing our game, Adrastus (b) Incentivizing people to play again and (c) effectively documenting our work through the tri-folds, thanks to the work of Sasha and Diana, i believe. I also loved that a lot of people lined up to play our game, even though it was a group of kids who worked on it.  But next time, I think we should get a bigger table. Though everything worked out, our tri-folds were forced to the floor, and so people did not really learn about us. We should also get wifi, for allowing people to rate our game on Google Forms, which needs internet.

I found many booths not inspirational, but very interesting. In our building itself Amijot and I found so many booths that were exciting. For example, there was a booth where we could play simple games on screens made from WWII technology! They had a game called "Flapping Bird" and me and Amijot continuously fought to beat each other's high score, which we had a truce for at 16 points. We also saw a booth where you could open flowers and fly helicopters with just your mind, and focusing. I also found the people who used the air/smoke/steam cannons to be fun, as they shot us many times and we got a lot of video. 

For the survey, I found that many people would play our game again, but a lot of people did not. This is probably due to our time constraints, and the fact the game was very challenging and not aesthetically pleasing. However, we can easily remedy this, and so this is no major issue that we cannot fix. 

To make a more complete game, i would like to see more playable levels, as it was very challenging. I would also like to make it look better, as the coliseum wasn't very real. The forest level was also too hard, and there was no visible path for people to take. 

Maker Faire Showvcase

                                                         Maker Faire Showcase Concept

My showcase design is, to quote Apple's VP of Design Jony Ive, "Unapologetically simple." This is basically Apple's design policy: simplicity and elegance while also being functional. Though Apple sacrifices functionality for design, as they did with the new Macbook with only one port, my design is the best of both worlds. 

At the back is our tri-fold, which will be decorated and clearly introduce our game and all its features, and have extra information about it. People can read about our game on the side. I would also include brochures (left) about our game to pass out around Maker Faire so our area would not be crowded with both readers and players. 

In the center is our masterpiece itself, on computers. As Paras Kumar described, "Having two computers will allow more people to play on our computers and not congest the area. Also, having two or more computers will allow us to showcase our game even if one computer stops working." I agree with Paras, and combined with the brochures means for a utilitarian presentation, showcasing as much of our game as we can to the maximum amount of people at Maker Faire. The front-facing speakers are optional, but will help showcase our OST more clearly. 

The size of this would be around the size of two of our classroom tables, creating one "group" in our class. One table would be used for the tri-fold, and the other table for the gameplay. Color should be focused on the tri-fold, as that is what initially capture the attention of our audience. 

My role in the Game Design Team was to create the narrative for the game, so that we would have a basis upon which we would build the game. I was also tasked with documenting our game. This I did with Ganesh, with our Google Doc. Then Amijot and I took it to Blogger, and completely redesigned our game Blogger to make it presentable should we tell people about it. At the beginning I was supposed to build the base, then I was to keep it going through pictures. As a team, we have been meeting our goals on a satisfactory scale, keeping in mind that we are not a multi-million dollar corporation with a lot of funding. I wish we had started this earlier. My greatest achievement was creating our new Blogger and making the narrative historically accurate.

Maker Faire Reflection II

This week, Amijot Singh and I took it upon ourselves to make the WHS Game Design blogger actually look game-related, instead of the basic, horrendous, and default theme that was there before. Before, it was aesthetically disgusting and repulsive, but after much labor (and trying to alter transparency) we managed to change it for the better, and now it looks beautiful. Because of the redesign, we can now proudly present our blogger to people at Maker Faire and they'll be impressed, instead of being turned off by the previous theme. 

In addition, I was tasked with making a Prezi with all of our documentation from the Google Doc and the blogger page. This is actually a challenge, as the pictures are from a variety of sources, and Docs doesn't allow me to redownload the pictures to put in the Prezi. So, putting pictures is just a hassle for me.