Faces for Poke Games - 2 hrs.
This week I hadn't anticipated a large problem: that the video edits I wanted to do to our final trailer in fact were impossible until our Wednesday large playtest. There, I plan to capture new footage for our trailer in a much more quiet location hopefully) where the volume is normalized and it is easier to understand.
In lieu of this, for my other work this week I focused on firstly the playtest survey (since plenty of people (hopefully) will be taking it), and the faces for the poke games.
For the playtest, I had to figure out how to insert pictures into the questions that needed them so testers had context if they didn't know the name. So time was taken first gathering the pictures, which took more time than it should because of the slot machine system; constant trial and error until I got the games I needed pictures for. Then I reworded things that I thought needed tweaking, and removed a large amount of questions that either weren't relevant anymore or that we already got a large amount of data for.
For the faces, I wanted to start with something simple, then add more as I felt was needed, sort of like a template. The part that took so much time was that I tried many different combinations of faces and the like before I settled on two that I enjoyed. These can obviously be improved, with shadows or whatnot as needed. They might look a little weird or creepy for what we are going for, but these are simple enough where they can be easily changed:
Content Positive:
- Fixed up the playtest survey for our big scheduled testing day (2 hrs)
- Made some faces for the poke games that are easily editable (2 hrs)
Content Negative:
- Didn't realize the scheduling conflict with the playtest date until mid this week, so I couldn't focus on the trailer like I wanted to.
Total Time Spent: 4 Hours
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As an additional thing to add to our PPJs this week, we were asked to go to GDC Vault and look up a post mortem of our choice, watch it, and discuss it here regarding how they handled it and our reaction.
The video I watched was entitled "4.5 Million Players in 100 Days: Lessons from Dying Light" ( http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022816/4-5-Million-Players-in ). The video was ~30 minutes in length, and I believe nicely sums up the process that the company went through from production pre-release to work post-release. The speaker went into detail as to how everything was created and handled with anticipation of release day, and the features they definitely wanted included in the final release (along with their priority). For Dying Light in particular, there was an emphasis on choice: they wanted the player to enjoy killing zombies, so melee combat was their first priority. This was quickly followed by the choice to not indulge in violence at all, instead being able to run from zombies using a parkour system they designed to be very fluid and intuitive to a player running through unknown areas. I find this aspect to be perhaps the most important take away from the speech, even if it was work done technically before the release, as it highlights that having a goal in mind is extremely important, and you want to keep a certain vision for your product by the time of release.
Nowadays watching post mortems are pretty interesting, because games do not so easily 'die' as they used to. Updates, patches, and DLC keep trickling in, at least for a few years, and so to get a true post mortem is difficult (particularly for successful games). Dying Light is now exception; the conference was held about 3/4 of a year after its initial launch, and the speaker talked about how it is very important to keep the audience engaged in the product, so they keep coming back. According to their stats, which they track meticulously (for patching reasons - i.e. if very few players use a certain trap, they might patch in a subtle way to show people they can use that trap), they had about a 35-40% retention rate on the game. This was referred to as a 'good thing,' because not all players on release keep playing, and to have nearly half of all people play it a year into its life is amazing. But the speaker stressed the importance of player content, and how using the Steam Workshop added life into the game, with nearly 150 user levels. They also engaged the community on Youtube with various challenges, and set up Skype pre-recorded message centers for little easter eggs having to do with the game.
When applied to Alien Arcade, I think it is important to keep in mind the audience we are trying to attract as well, and to keep them occupied with our game. Obviously it is really different as this is a small college assignment with a team of 11, which won't be continued in any way past this term - unlike Dying Light which is patched still. But being able to realize if we kept our initial 'vision,' not only though this term but through all 20 weeks of development, and if we considered our audience enough will be a large portion of the personal postmortem for me.
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