Week 1
Abstract Our learning objectives for the week were:
Post 1: Forming
This week began by defining the scope and aims of the module. Then, introduced the assignment briefs and the underlying themes.
This module assignment requires us to work in multidisciplinary teams to design and develop an interactive prototype.
We were encouraged to form teams before the module started but were still afforded time to gather people if we found it challenging.
Luckily I had managed teams before and knew it would be challenging to form a team of complementary skills. So started to reach out before the modules started. I initially pinged a note to members of the cohort in Discord. Detailing my background and interest in Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual and Augmented reality.
The response was quite weak, then Lucas Souza replied, and we set up a meeting.
Lucas is based in Brussels and has experience in Game design - Mechanics, rigging, interaction design, C# Unity, Narrative and Character development.
We discussed my skills and what gaps in our skills we needed. I had worked with many start-ups in my career so I could handle the Programme management and deck building. So we needed a Front-end Dev, UX/UI support and crucially, an artist.
I created a pie chart that broke down our skills our project goal and let people respond.
Dan McKinley was the first to respond; he had started the course in January. Dan is based in South London, has Artistic ability, Game design and C# Unity experience.
Next, Linda Fitzgerald; started the course in January. Linda is based in Belgrade. Has Java, Mobile development experience, and is a Visual Designer.
Finally, the last part of the puzzle was Luke Morrisby, the artist who had recently picked up a job as a Key artworker for a game design company.
I assumed the role of team leader and messaged everyone to meet up before our scheduled Module Kick-off webinar to chat and get to know each other and talk about ways of working.
I reviewed the assignment material and set out a collaboration policy.
I work full-time, and the course is part-time and designed for 300 hours. That works out at 25 per week over 12 weeks and our expected contribution.
Having managed teams before and workflow, I advised that 20% of that time should be spent on meetings and group workshops, with the rest spent on individual contribution and getting the work done.
Guiding the team to allow 5 hours per week for these meetings. We were also told that we would have a 30-minute tutor meeting each week, leaving us 4.5 hours a week to talk.
Post 2: Meeting 1: Ways of working and intros
01/06/2021 As the team leader, I took notes, set the agenda and chaired the meeting.
The goal of the meeting was to discuss ways of working and formal introductions.
I put together the following Discussion topics
Intros and background
Golden hours
Module set-up
Channels of communication
Software and Frameworks
The brief
Roles
Next steps
The key action item from the meeting was for each team member to share their windows of working or 'Golden hours'. These hours would be used as windows when team members could expect replies back on chat, when we could arrange meetings and times we should commit to making ourselves available.
Our teams golden working hours for collaboration are: Tue – 19:00-22:00 Wed – 19:00-22:00 Thu – 19:00-22:00 Sun – 14:00-16:00
Decisions from our first meeting were as follows
Set-up a new Dicord channel
Make ourselves available for a minimum of 5 hours per week for collaboration.
Meet after the 3 Jun 2021 session to discuss the theme of our prototype
Log our product development in Confluence and JIRA
Regular weekly team meeting Tuesdays at 19:00 BST
Sprint cycles Tuesday - Monday
Full meeting notes can be found here on our confluence page
We had been using Discord already to communicate, but Dan suggested creating our own server to avoid bloat and increase privacy.
Another key decision was to use Confluence and JIRA. I had been using Confluence and JIRA for years so suggested it as Atlassian products are hard to avoid in the modern workplace. We discussed it as a team and concluded that it has great integrations too, so I created a project 'Space' and invited everyone.
We also agreed to have a working session every Tuesday and run our sprints from Tuesday to Monday.
Again having managed teams for years, I know not everyone is at their best on Monday morning. Shaking off the residue of the weekend and getting back into the work groove can sometimes take a good part of the day. Plus, Mondays get more than their fair share of Bank holidays and an extended 3-day weekend, with 20% of sick days occurring on a Monday (Morris, 2021).
The bookend to Monday Fog is the Friday Fatigue. Fridays are also prone to the same extended 3-day weekend problem as Mondays. Getting your whole team together Friday afternoon can be a bit of a challenge. The quality of feedback captured during a Sprint Review meeting held on Friday afternoon is likely to suffer as a result.
We also discussed when we would like our tutor to join our meeting, and I suggested the main point the tutor could add value would be Sprint Review meetings (Tuesday) before Sprint Planning also on a Tuesday. Yes, creating a busy day, but potentially dedicating only one day to meeting and the rest of the week to productivity.
References
Morris, R. (2021). How To Call In Sick (Even If You're Not) – Zippia. [online] Zippia. Available at: https://www.zippia.com/advice/3-tips-sucessfully-calling-sick-even-youre-not/ [Accessed 15 Jun. 2021].
Post 3: Meeting 2 - Define game narrative
03/06/2021 Having defined our ways of working in our last meeting, we needed to define our game narrative and what our game did.
I took notes, set the agenda and chaired the meeting. I put together the following discussion topics
Location
Gameplay style
UI elements
Platform
Structure
The key action item from the meeting was for each team member to individually come up with a game narrative and share our ideas for a meeting on 6 Jun 2021
Further decisions from our meeting were as follows
Use @Luke Morrisby art style for the game
Create a Point and Click game
Full meeting notes can be found here on our confluence page
Post 4: World building
At the end of the last brainstorming session, we said we would individually develop a game narrative and share our ideas for a meeting on 6 Jun 2021.
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While working in VR a few years ago, I started looking into how I could prompt active participation in 360 immersive experiences.
I wanted to move away from 'on rails' experiences and have users feel as if they were truly transported and immersed in other worlds.
I didn't want a gaming experience but instead create worlds where subtle illusions or hints pushed the narrative forward—creating elements within the experience that would enable the viewer to decide how the story progresses.
Interactive storytelling by this definition allows the user to generate several different narratives. So I needed to explore and gain a deep understanding of storytelling and how fulfilling stories were constructed.
I came across author John Yorke (2014). Yorke is widely acknowledged as the UK's foremost expert on story writing and had written a book called Into the Woods (Yorke, 2014).
Into the Woods outlines John's premise that a universal structure underpins all successful stories, whatever their genre, format or content. Recognising that all narratives share a common five-act structure, we can tell any story – and communicate any message – more successfully.
When Yorke set up the BBC Writers Academy, his job was to teach people storytelling. So he developed a ridiculously simplistic way of trying to analyse how a story worked and came up with a system in which if you ask ten questions and you're able to answer them all, it will probably give you a decent story shape.
Yorke asks us to answer these ten questions:
Whose story is it?
What is their flaw?
What is the inciting incident?
What do they want?
What obstacles are in their way?
What is at stake?
Why should we care?
What do they learn?
How and why?
How does it end?
He uses a scene from Eastenders to prove his theory.
When we analyse his this theory, we immediately see a pattern which Yorke describes as story physics and that opposites are at the root of great storytelling.
Question | David | Bianca |
Whose story is it? | David's | Bianca |
What is their flaw? | Knowledge | Innocence |
What is the inciting incident? | Bianca tries to kiss him | David rejects her |
What do they want? | To not sleep with her | To sleep with him |
What obstacles are in their way? | Bianca | David |
What is at stake? | His mental state | Her mental state |
Why should we care? | He's vulnerable | She's vulnerable |
What do they learn? | To tell the truth | To deny the truth |
How and why? | Bianca pushes him to point of no return | David pushes him to point of no return |
How does it end? | Truth imparted | Truth rejected |
I also looked at Syd Filed (1978), who in the nineteen seventies, wrote 'Screenplay - The foundations of story telling', which was the first book that attempted to try and articulate how storytelling worked in Hollywood. He came up with an archetype and paradigm of the three acts structure.
In his eyes, Act 1 was the set-up, Act 2 the confrontation and Act 3 the resolution. Interestingly, at the end of each stage, he would insert a turning point to make it clear to the viewer that the story has progressed to the next stage.
Fundamentally, each stage is an act, something confronted by its opposite, which learns, assimilates and then changes.
I found these theories useful for my VR work and decided to use this methodology again for this module.
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As a first draft, I sketched out a strawman and things I need to cover.
As we're creating an interactive game, I listed out the things below, mainly from my experience playing games and using the theories described by John Yorke.
Story
World
Character
Dialogue
Pace and tone
Objects
Menus
Hints and Lore
This then led me to think about motives and what type of game we were making:
Searching
Scavenging
Talking
Exploring
Investigating
I came up with the following list but didn't want to go too far and explore the themes with the team.
Ignoring the mechanics, for now, I began with world-building.
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Draft 1:
2222 - A dystopian world in the distant future.
At the peak of the age of information, technological implants were common. We no longer had to think independently. We could replay memories and quickly look up information, download and subscribe to skills like cooking recipes, farming, building, and manufacturing items.
(Think Years and Years supercharged - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m000539g/years-and-years)
If you wanted to learn how to juggle, you could download and rent that skill. Over time 'Chime' the makers of the chips slowly began to remove skills from the people. Making society more obedient and less free-thinking. Governments started to fall, and Chime took control and created a 'Single State.'
Chips were implanted at birth, and citizens programmed to their role in society. If you were a '1', you were a breeder, born to create society's next generation. But if you were a '12', you were a drone programmed to do basic services.
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I thought this was a good place to stop as I came across this video on game narrative writing.
The key point was to not start with a story.
Having a story already built tends to box you into several ways and limits your mechanics. Having not created a game before, I thought I heed this advice and take my idea back to the team.
References
Syd Field (1979). Screenplay : the foundations of screenwriting. Vancouver, B.C.: Langara College.
Yorke, J. (2014). Into the woods : how stories work and why we tell them. London, England: Penguin Books.
Extra Credits (2013). How To Start Your Game Narrative - Design Mechanics First - Extra Credits. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22HoViH4vOU [Accessed 17 Aug. 2021].
EastEnders (2008). David Wicks reveals that he is Bianca’s father - EastEnders. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRjYqd1kzvI [Accessed 17 Aug. 2021].
Post 5: Meeting 3 - Narrative
06/06/2021 We met on the 6th of June, and each of us took turns presenting our ideas. I took notes, set the goal (game narrative) and chaired the meeting.
Full meeting notes can be found here on our confluence page
Narrative ideas
Presenter | Notes |
Linda Fitzgerald |
|
Luke Morrisby |
|
Lucas Souza |
|
Daniel McKinley |
|
Nural Choudhury |
|
After presenting our ideas, we had an open discussion about what we liked and just let the conversation flow—jumping between Game mechanics and game narrative.
Key talking points were:
Procedural narrative discussion
Sci-Fi World discussion
Anti-gravity world
2D vs. 3D
We need a companion character
Voice recognition within the game?
Wake states and first scene design
Front-end screens and branding
Combat and drone character discussion
Character abilities
Puzzle and game discussions
We then started to discuss the project scope and deliverables, and naturally, everyone was drawn to roles.
Linda Fitzgerald wanted to take on UX, UI and Accessibility. Luke Morrisby, the Creative and Key artwork. Lucas Souza, the Back-end development lead, and Daniel McKinley, the Front-end development lead.
I found the game narrative interesting and wanted to be responsible for world-building. I also had the most experience managing teams and pulling pitches together, so I took control of putting the pitch together.
We resolved our story to the following pieces:
Sci-Fi future world Merged with 'Memory Chips'
No longer creating a game about dementia
A game about someone in a world where people have lost some abilities
We concluded the meeting by discussing Artefact storage which involved the use of Bitbucket/Github and Backlog creation.
We then created the main Epic tickets in JIRA and each person created tickets, which we would resolve at sprint planning.
I typed up the notes which could be found here.
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