Week 10: Westinghouse Academy

We were so fortunate to be able to playtest at Westinghouse Academy this week! We connected with the school through our subject matter expert, SoulMan IT. He works with the school’s music department through his residency and was able to land a spot presenting to their highschool music class.

Besides preparing and attending the Westinghouse playtest, we are also preparing for Playtest Day this Saturday. Playtest day is a a 6-hour speed run playtest. Our department invite all kinds of people to come to our workplace and test all the project in development.

Westinghouse Feedback:

We played the game in a small group of seven because we only had one working laptop. I prompted the kids to ask questions to Fly Gull and make suggestions for the Fill-in-the-blanks section. We ran into some technical difficulties with the scoring, but the kids didn’t notice and wanted to keep playing. Here’s a collection of their feedback:

• Wanted to curse, but only cursed while chatting with Fly Gull. They didn’t curse in the rap.
• Didn’t interact with Fly Gull like AI treated her like a person.
• Wanted more connection with the player character to help with the boast category.
• There were some kids that were very vocal and some that only spoke directly to me when asked to speak.
• They were willing to read aloud.
• Impressed by Fly Gull’s skill.
• Thought the level wasn’t too hard or too easy.
• They were eager to participate and talked over each other.
• They understood who they were talking to but often wanted to insult Fly Gull more than find out her weaknesses.
• They regenerated the bars when they didn’t like them.
• Didnt’ feel like the information given from the audience was super helpful. They would prefer to talk to a hater or neutral audience. (maybe press?)
• With some help, they found out Fly Gull can’t fly and that she is a nepo baby
• They really enjoyed the fill-in-the-blank feature, and even though the scoring didn’t work, they still wanted to continue the battle.
• Thought the audience preferences and weaknesses and rhyming ability were how it was being scored. They treated the scoring like how a real person would score the battle.

Since we didn’t play the game in a traditional way, it is hard to synthesize this feedback. Also, we gave the kids more clues than they necessarily needed. Our overall takeaway from this playtest was that we need more direction and feedback in the game. It was interesting to test the game in an educational setting, given that our team decided not to create an educational game. There is still a lot to learn, even if we are explicitly teaching the player how to rap.

Preparing for Playtest Day:

Our playtest with Westinghouse showed us that there is a lot of work we need to do before Playtest Day. We want to see if we can address those key design issues: Does the player understand the game of the object and how to achieve it?

For Playtest Day, we’re hosting in 20-minute chunks. Below is our playtest structure. We want to add the UI and make sure the movement/camera code is integrated with the AI chat and battle modes.

Next Steps:

Beyond Playtest Day, we are also preparing for Softs, our internal playtest with the faculty. We want to iterate on our feedback from Playtest Day and then move forward with XO Soul.