Hello!
This week’s post will cover two major touchpoints: Softs (with our consultant Ruth and some other members of the faculty) and our Northgate Workshop (with local educators and facilitators).
Softs
Our plan for Softs week was to meet with Ruth on Monday November 28th and then additional faculty two days later on Wednesday. We felt that organizing our Softs week this way would allow us the appropriate amount of time to work with Ruth while also getting a chance to speak with some other faculty as well.
Ruth gave the team a bunch of feedback about different ways to refine the project. Some of the advice was to try to standardize a lot of the art assets and dialog. For the art, there were slight differences in how player sprites were created, which created inconsistencies in player height.
For the dialog, there were instances of terminology that would not have an introduction. Things like referring to static or the issues with the monitors on the spaceship were included in dialog choices for the player without having any other character bring those up. Player knowledge and player character knowledge would then feel disconnected as the character knew things the player didn’t.
As we spoke with the other faculty, we got additional feedback surrounding the following elements:
- There might be no dialog while the player just stands around. We likely want to occasionally have dialog that points them in the correct direction.
- Some clickable elements didn’t have a hover effect/hover effect in general may be too subtle.
- We use a quest box for returning the engineers to the ship, but nowhere else in the game.
- Some of the dialog choices felt redundant or like there wasn’t really a choice.
- We might want further examples of the engineers calling out examples of racism.
Northgate Workshop
We had scheduled a meeting for December 2nd to be held at Northgate with local educators and facilitators who will likely have use for Power Core Values (PCV) in the future. The goal of the workshop was two-fold: introduce the game to teachers who may use it AND to outline effective strategies to best utilize what we created.
Starting with the game itself, the educators overall seemed satisfied with the deliverable. There was no communication about fears that the game wouldn’t be valuable enough as a tool for the teachers or for the students. All of the educators (minus a couple that were late) were able to complete the game with either no assistance or minimal assistance. A number of the educators actually went back and played multiple times to explore more after the initial playthrough.
Then for the strategies for using our game as a teaching tool, we presented the folding activity to the facilitators as an introduction. (Each person is given a cutout of Nanoi and a cutout of Zun, our two engineers. We then describe situations and if the person feels that would be hurtful to a particular character, the participant should fold the engineer.)
After that we discussed a variety of ways that conversations and activities could unfold.
Some of the most noteworthy or interesting:
- “Where do I see myself in this?” Asking this question as a way to explore which characters players tend to identify with/share experiences with.
- Noticing differences aren’t necessarily inherently bad, it can be more about when value (or lack of value) is tied to that difference.
- RC is a personal reflection of views, sometimes internal, other times external. “Who is your RC?” can be an important way to recognize those influences that we assumed were just positive that might actually be more biased.
Overall, the workshop went well. The educators were excited to work with our game and we were excited to explore its applications.
Moving Forward
Our plan for week 14 is to try to ensure that all of our project documentation and our archive is up to date. We are still polishing PCV but are moving into the final stages. We want to meet with Ruth and try to work on any finishing touches before we are done for the semester.
Thanks for reading,
James from STEMspire