Hello!
This blog post will be covering Week 13 (4/18 – 4/22).
The main focus of this week was our Softs presentation and getting feedback on how we are finalizing the project for our final presentation.
Softs
Going into Softs, we had two main points of focus for the team: accessibility and transformation.
Accessibility
We have been looking at the information surrounding our project for a whole semester. We have spoken with SMEs and iterated on numerous prototypes. We are therefore no longer really representative of our audience and we knew that we needed to be conscious of that going into Softs. We wanted to look at how we were presenting our information and ensure that our audience was not being bombarded with dense jargon they could not understand.
Transformation
The purpose of Terra Thrift (and ECHO as a whole) is to create a transformative experience that educates players on the environmental impact of fabric sustainability, what they as individuals can do to make a difference, and different ways to augment their habits for the better. If we end up making a fun game that doesn’t accurately initiate this transformation, then we have not accomplished the mission we set out to complete.
We wanted to use our playtests during Softs to give an indication of how well we had accomplished creating an accessible transformation.
Our playtests showed that we were worried about/focused on the “correct” things. Our environment and assets are wonderful, but we still have work to do to tighten up the actual transformation the players are attempting to engage in. Some of the reality of the project is that this transformation could always be refined further (past the end of the semester), but we want to improve and polish as much as we believe we can and make our final deliverable for the final presentation feel like a really solid package.
Throughout the week, we were able to tests with groups of students, as well as numerous faculty including our advisors, Dave and Brenda, and our consultant, Heather. We found their feedback especially beneficial and plan to work on polishing/fixing a lot of the notes they had for us.
Our next week will be finalizing any changes we want to make from Softs and preparing for our Final Presentation on May 3rd.