Weekly Report 28 4/8/18 - 4/14/18
Through the development of levels for the Final Product and the development of logistical arrangements for the Final Presentation, progress has been made smoothly this week. The concepts of shaky concept building and competitive room scheduling remind me deeply of the quote which began this whole thing. It is a kind of harkening back: the “fail faster” motif is showing itself again.
Constructing levels is inherently risky because there is no guarantee that a level idea will work in terms of playability or holistic narrative. In spending the past week putting together ideas at a rapid pace, it had to be recognized that each hour-long endeavor could completely fail and become a waste of time. “Fail faster” is what encourages designers to test as early as possible to avoid losing too much time, but although playtesters were anticipated to provide feedback around Wednesday, there was not as much availability has had been hoped. In this sense, it is clear that I have not failed faster this week, and to continue the desired pace of producing desirable content, failing faster will need to become a greater part of the development process. This can be achieved by more rapidly creating builds, finding more playtesters in hopes of greater availability, and sinking less time into an idea before having it tested preliminarily.
There was also an element of failing faster in the idea of searching for a vacant room for the Final Presentation, as by the time my search began, many of the easy picks were already occupied. Luckily, in that moment, I was committed to fail as quickly as possible, so asking from room to room even if there was no previously established relationship between myself and the teacher in that room helped find one of the sparse vacancies remaining in the school. In this sense, failing faster was achieved, although it could have been much quicker if the search began a week earlier. In any case, this was a good reminder of the core philosophy behind game design and behind the reasoning for ISM, and so to see it arise in the day-to-day responsibilities of the class is to be observed and expected.
LEVEL CLEAR.