So let’s make a game. Sounds easy enough, so what ideas do we have? That’s where we find ourselves this week. After finalizing logistics about our ‘core hours’ of teamwork and official instructor check-ins, we dove into our project roles, type of interactive interest and ideal outcomes.

Let me introduce myself, Benjamin Walker is my name, a native born and raised Pittsburgher. I have a degree in electrical engineering and higher education administration from the University of Pittsburgh. I currently work for the Homewood Children’s Village, a non-profit focused on helping the children of Homewood to survive and thrive. We, as an organization, have decided to commit to providing experiential learning opportunities for our youth in the gaming industry and entrepreneurship. This project is dear to me because I grew up reading and watching these characters, in their world, do & be amazing. These are exactly the type of culture-rich projects I strive for professionally and am honored to be a part of here at the ETC.

Establishing ‘Core Hours’ is the necessary time we spend together working on the project in the highest spirit of world-building, camaraderie and support. Because we also decided to have co-producing roles, we delegated responsibilities based on talent, relevance and interest.

In our first project-focused meeting, we listed the major components of the project that needed attention in order to have a better understanding of deductive games, children’s board games, and LBE play, let alone the core of the Billy Jo Jive’s significance and how we will honor those important aspects. Not a small task. Everyone had LBE on their list of interesting experiences.

We listed the supplementary task categories and each of us chose primary responsibility to lead the work. Such as Voice Actors, Fabrication – Props, Art – 2D and Story – Writing/Dialog, just name a few. We also got the rest of the team to experience the Tilt 5 technology.

As one should note, these weeks were essential ‘get-to-know’ a great many things; our team, the source material, our client, our audience, our faculty guides … even deeper how we wanted to present these things to others as we shaped this experience. Asking ourselves the definition of representation and literacy. If we agreed that what we were making met the standards of a transformational game… we agreed. Now, which of them fits best with the goals of our stakeholders? All this introspection and interspection led to great insights in honing design goals and the draft ideas for our logo. Piecing together our Identity.

The producers attended the 1st Producers Roundtable of the semester, the topic was appropriately, ‘Preparing for Quarters’. The time to let the faculty and staff know you are on the right track and understand the assignment.