Midyear assessments entail a 10-minute long presentation by us to our project coordinator and an additional teacher who knows nothing about the project. The presentation must cover the work and research that has gone into the project thus far and the teachers grade us. It is important we pass this assessment or we could have the project terminated immediately. No pressure then.. :S
Actually, there wasn't any pressure. As far as projects going wrong at the HKU, we're totally in the clear. Our project coordinator (who has been monitoring our progress since the start) had full confidence in us that we would pass and we did. Yay us! ;)
We still have some things we were told we need to work on though, such as target audience research and play testing. Here's the official assessment we received (translated from Dutch). Ratings from lowest to highest are fail, pass, good and very good:
Conceptual Prestige: Pass
Artistic Prestige: Good
Technical Prestige: Pass
Integration Research and Design: Pass
Project Planning and Coordination: Pass
Team Work and Communication: Good
Professionalism: Good
Project Documentation: Pass
Strong aspects of the project:
- Humor
- Visual style, art very good
- Attempt at high-quality voice acting
Weak aspects of the project:
- Concept isn't mega innovative
- Target audience research (for instance: length of dialogue and holding attention VS static images. Pay attention to the fact that an 8 year old boy has different experiences with the world than a 12 year old girl.) Be careful for assumptions. Can the target audience understand the terms and themes in the game?
- Play testing
- Testing on tablets has not been done yet
- No phased planning with deadlines. When and were should something be done? (NOTE: We actually do have this, they just hadn't seen it yet before they wrote that.)
Issues to be solved before the final assessment
Overall feedback:
- Fun project, good job but target audience research and play testing is lacking.
- Is the term interactive audio book still applicable? Perhaps interactive story book augmented with audio? Or just a "normal" adventure game? Is it not possible to also include an interactive aspect with the music?
Final Grade: Good
Our target audience is probably the trickiest thing we have to tackle. We didn't really communicate our target audience correctly during the presentation. We feel our game should be enjoyable by people who are interested in the visual style, themes and gameplay regardless of age or experience in gaming. The problem is if you say that, it makes it out like you don't know what you're talking about. Also if you say your game must be suitable for 8 year old kids, it feels like the school interprets that as its ONLY for 8 year olds and no other age group. VERY aggravating! >:(
Some of this feedback might be down to us not communicating information correctly to the teacher who hasn't been following our project. For instance, our aforementioned target audience issue and our planning, which actually is well kept on a chart on our wall that they didn't see until after the presentation. (Thanks Martin for pointing it out. ;P) There were also plenty of things pointed out that we hadn't focused on enough as well like play testing and the term describing our game.
All in all, it was certainly interesting to get an outsider perspective on our project and was a real kick in the butt for us to get more perspective on the project. Our project coordinator really stuck up for us and what we're doing too which really makes us feel we've got something with our game. *tear of joy* :,)
This is how we've interpreted the feedback from the midyear:
- We haven't communicated our target audience correctly and this caused confusion so we need to refine our definition. Today we looked at the design documents of games and cartoons with similar target audiences. We also looked more into the origins of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, a big source of inspiration for our game (also Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?).
- We need to start play testing ASAP. We got the game working on a tablet today so we've already taken a big step in this direction. There's also 4 pages of bugs that need fixing...But hey, its a start. ;P
- We were planning on animating the illustrations a bit if we had the time at the end. Now we feel we definitely should do this as it adds a little extra feature to keep the attention of the player.
- Adding an interactive musical element is more of a "how I would do it" type feedback but we are going to add something along these lines later in the game. Oops... Gave something away there! :P
- We need a better definition of what our game is. When we started Storkinators, our concept was a 100% audio game you play on an MP3 player. It was this point we referred to our game as an interactive audio book. The game has grown a lot since then and this term is indeed a little misleading. Maybe Choose-Your-Own-Point-And-Click-Adventure App? Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? At this point we're temped to make up a term so people don't badger on at us about what kind of game Storkinators is and just accept it for what it is. XD
Agh, can you tell we're worked up? Its not so bad, the midyear could have gone much worse but we've been working on Storkinators for about 2-3 months now and its our baby. We love it and care about it and want it to be great. That's the problem with game creation, you get so attached to your project if you're enjoying it. We as game creators have to put so much of ourselves into a game, that it becomes part of you.
Ho-hum...
On a final (more positive) note, check out what Erik (voice actor for the three composers) spotted today!
GIANT STORKS ARE ATTACKING! HIDE YOUR BABIES! D:
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