Week 8

Abstract Our learning objectives for the week were:

• Outline a brief history of law.

• Note the differences between civil and criminal law.

• Distinguish between copyright, trademark and patents.

Meeting 1: Progress update

2021/07/20 Much of the team had not made any progress at all. Lucas Souza and Daniel McKinley had not synced up regarding the distribution of work.

Linda Fitzgerald had progressed with the style guide.

We discussed that there needs to be progress made, and the team should continue to discuss the parts after the meeting.

Key action points:

• Daniel McKinley to focus on environment design

• Lucas Souza to work on the game mechanics

• Daniel McKinley and Lucas Souza to create briefs for the rest of the team on what assets they need

• Lucas Souza to draw out the level design and make decisions and make tickets

• Luke Morrisby to continue creating the storyboard based on narrative written by me.

The rest of the meeting notes can be picked up here.

Meeting 2: Progress update 2

2021/07/21 I fed back to the team about the loss of momentum and that we had to start managing our workloads better.

I analysed that backlog, and some individuals were not transparently communicating enough or updating confluence.

I talked to the group about this for several weeks, but it had now gotten to a point where I felt the project would be at risk if we didn't address it.

Some individuals mentioned that they were not used to updating tasks this way, but I countered by saying we agreed on this approach in our team charter and that and a set amount of hours was required.

As a resolution, we groomed the backlog and filled out the tickets in a more detailed way to get things finished.

Team performance

Assignee	Total Tickets	Complete	In progress	To do
Nural Choudhury	21	14	1	6
Linda Fitzgerald	10	5	1	4
Daniel McKinley	18	8	3	7
Luke Morrisby	14	6	4	4
Lucas Souza	28	20	3	5

The rest of the meeting notes can be picked up here.

Post 1: Project Prioritisation

As the team leader, a third of my role was to ensure the project was on track for delivery. Given that the University had compacted the timeline of the module, this gave us little time to experiment.

The course content (https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/study/online/how-you-study) describes postgraduate students should dedicate 20 hours per week to study.

However, the deadline dates were bought forward to 19-Aug and 24-Aug, so we were required to dedicate 25 hours per week.

This was unachievable for most of the team and really not the study load expected for a part-time course. The impact of missing the deadline would cap our mark at 50%. So we were better off getting something in rather than nothing—experimentation in Machine Learning was reduced, but experimentation in accessibility and the gaming loop grew.

We held weekly retrospective meetings so we could help each other and target events. But they weren't issues that needed dwelling on. Our velocity was impacted mainly by life events. Luke was getting married, Linda was moving homes, Lucas had a baby, and Dan had health issues. I myself was delivering two major projects, but being in a learning environment, it wouldn't have improved team morale if we kept on focusing on what wasn't getting done as opposed to producing something decent.

I saw my role as Support. This can mean many things to many people, but to me, it meant having empathy and maintaining one's privacy. Reflecting on peoples personal problems seemed inappropriate, so I hadn't written about it. Plus, our tutor was also part of our working group and treated as a team member. So he was well aware of any issues and elements we had no control over, so he could have supported us if things felt wrong. Again, we were in a learning environment, so it is what it is.

What should not be neglected here either is the difficulty and importance of team leadership. If it were an easy role, it wouldn't exist within teams or professional environments.

Even so, we worked really well as a team. Being responsible for the game narrative, I ran a few workshops with Dan to discuss how the narrative could support the gaming loop and what we would need to change to create a cohesive playable story.

I took a lot of time to explore storytelling in a game setting looking at the Fate Core system.

Post 2: Market research

I put together a survey is to gather relevant market research to inform our product build. The link to the survey is: https://forms.gle/t4h77tMBUDUzDtL6A

The questions within the survey we designed to:

• provide insight into the market

• give us an idea of commercial viability

• underpinning our business case

• an idea of our target audience

I posted the survey on Reddit under the following channels:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/ https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videogames/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/ https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelites/ https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/

Convenience sampling with Reddit This type of sampling has many disadvantages (Lavrakas, 2008). The selection process, for instance, is susceptible to bias and influences beyond the control of the researcher. There is no way to identify inclusion criteria before selecting subjects, and it can lead to under-representation or over-representation of particular groups within the sample.

Nevertheless, convenience sampling is the only option as we have no money for Facebook ads or audience recruitment.

The demographics of Reddit A 2021 Statista survey (Statista Research Department, 2021), found that 36% of US Reddit users were aged 18-29, 22% were between 30-49, and 13% were above 50.

In the UK a 2020 Statista survey (Statista Research Department, 2020) found that 23% were 15-25, 24% were 26-35, 12% were 36-45 and 6% were above 46.

A 2016 Pew Research paper (Barthel et al., 2016) found that 67% of Reddit users in the United States are male. At the same time, a 2017 Statistica Reports found that the percentage may be as high as 69% male.

According to data collected by Reddit in 2016, 64% of users were between 18 and 29, and 29% were between 30-49.

Only 6 per cent of Reddit users were found to be between the ages of 50 and 64, and just a single per cent were 65 or older.

Questions

1. What gender do you identify as?

2. Please state your location, (country)

3. How old are you?

4. Which platforms do you play on?

5. How long have you been playing video games?

6. How often do you play video games?

7. Do you consider yourself a hardcore gamer?

8. What games of the Rogue-like genre have you played?

9. What were your favourites and why?

10. How much would you expect to pay for a Rogue-like genre game?

Results Over 24 hours, we had 86 responses. The key findings from our results that could:

• provide insight into the market

• give us an idea of commercial viability

• underpinning our business case

• an idea of our target audience

Category	Results
Demographics	79.1% of respondents were male 7% female 11.6% prefered not to say
Age	40.5% - 25 to 34 33.3% - 18 to 24 14.3% - 35 to 44
Platforms	97.7 were PC users 44% Nintendo 37.2% iOS/Android
Popular games	Hades Binding of Isaac Dead Cells Enter the Gungeon Slay the Spire
Price point	30.2% - 16-20 30.2% - 11-15 18.6% - 5 -10

Insights Despite the use of Convenience sampling, our results indicate our game should:

• Appeal to 18-40-year-olds

• PC gamers

• £/$ 11-20 pricepoint

We should also conduct a competitive analysis of what made the following games appealing and include similar features.

References

1. Barthel, M., Stocking, G., Holcomb, J. and Mitchell, A. (2016). Reddit news users more likely to be male, young and digital in their news preferences. [online] Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project. Available at: https://www.journalism.org/2016/02/25/reddit-news-users-more-likely-to-be-male-young-and-digital-in-their-news-preferences/ [Accessed 5 Sep. 2019].

2. Lavrakas, P.J. (2008). Convenience Sampling. Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods, [online] 2008. Available at: https://methods.sagepub.com/reference/encyclopedia-of-survey-research-methods/n105.xml.

3. Statista Research Department (2020). Reddit usage by age in the UK 2020. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184024/reddit-user-demographics/ [Accessed 22 Jul. 2021].

4. Statista Research Department (2021). U.S. Reddit reach by age group 2019. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/261766/share-of-us-internet-users-who-use-reddit-by-age-group/.‌

Post 3: Competetive analysis

I had looked at the numbers behind games in a previous post. But not specifically the features that allowed them to be so successful.

From the survey, I noted that the most popular games were: - Hades - Binding of Isaac - Dead Cells - Enter the Gungeon - Slay the Spire

So decided to create a table to analyse the key features and discuss with the team about including them.

Game	Features
Hades	two-year-long early access Hades is praised for its story, characters gameplay and soundtrack The characters feel authentic The game art and portraits of the characters are wonderfully drawn Combat is fast-paced and challenging Worldbuilding offers more reasons to play an already fascinating mix of RPG and action combat
The Binding of Isaac	highly replayability Extensive range and combinations of power-ups It is accessible to new players short playthrough time a difficult challenge, often set by the randomness of what power-ups the player happened to acquire during a single run game's playability, art style, and story the visual style of the game is one of its biggest selling points the soundtrack is well-suit the themes of the game
Dead Cells	A year of early access Awards for Control Design, Art Direction, Excellence in Gameplay A distinctive soundtrack Easily digestible run through Beautifully detailed and shifting levels instil a feeling of discovery and familiarity. Gameplay pushes the limits of your ability
Enter the Gungeon	Very difficult game a large variety of guns in the game The story has a terrific sense of humour. fast-paced Unlockable characters Characters have different special abilities. co-op mode and control a fifth character enemies vary in strength, endurance, and attack behaviour The game features over 300 different guns and items that can be combined. With multiple playthroughs, players can encounter non-player characters that can be rescued.
Slay the Spire	Players can select from multiple characters with unique tailored abilities. Branching story and gameplay structure Enemies vary in strength, offer enhanced rewards. campfires used to heal or upgrade shops where users can buy cards, relics and potions from, as well as to remove cards from the deck chests with random loot Random choice-based encounters Combat is turn-based using cards Completed or failed runs contribute points towards unlocking new characters or new relics and cards that will be made available for the specific character.

Similarities and key features that made these games popular were:

• story

• characters

• gameplay

• soundtrack

• Variety of power-ups and upgrades

• Game randomness

• Accessibility for new players

• fast-pace

So for our game to be successful, we would need to lean into these aspects.