Devlog 3

Greetings!

Team Dopamine here. Over the past few weeks, our team worked on creating a proposal presentation for our game pitch. We also had several documents created alongside it to support our pitch, listed below:

Pitching our Project

Creative Brief

A 2-page document outlining of our creative vision and design intentions for the game. It uses the theme of our game so it looks more visually interesting. Below is the first page of the document. The second page is included in "files" at the top of this devlog.

Game Design Document (GDD)

A document created to provide more specific details about our design intentions for our game. It served to outline mechanics, our target audience, and the platform for the project, among other useful details. Not attached here due to length. 

Persona Profiles

Multiple faux personas were created by our team members, to emulate the type of player we envision our game appealing to. This would help give the team insight into our market, and potential areas that the project could lean into, in order to appeal to our target audience. It also helps us get out of the mindset of catering the game to ourselves, instead of the players, who will be playing our game without all the inside knowledge on what went into its creation, behind the curtain, so to speak. One example of a persona is shown below, and the rest are included in the "files" section on top of this devlog.

Proposal Presentation

Finally, we created a presentation to pitch our game to investors. It was made both for the purpose of selling the concept, and for helping the team hone in on the core aspect of the game so we could further develop our idea during the concepting stage. Feedback from during the presentations helped us figure out the flaws in our ideas, and the strengths, so we would have an easier time making our game more appealing to both future players and investors. Again, not attached here due to length.

Teamwork!

Along with our pitch, we also made sure to take a step back and reflect on our teamwork thus far. This was done through an exercise called "Sailboat", where we addressed successes, failures, setbacks and future predictions for our team during our time together. This was a great exercise for team building, as we all seemed to be on the same page about teamwork after going over everyone's individual thoughts. It's important to have moments like this during group work, so interactions can be more informal and friendly, because it's great for team motivation and building good connections (as robotic as that may sound lol). The results from our reflection are shown below!

Team Philosophy

As a team, we went over our philosophy once more, and clarified it in our Team Charter. Generally, we have “roles” assigned to each team member, each corresponding role is dedicated to specific aspects of the project that is required to succeed in completing the game to our collective vision. For example, if anyone has a programming related question, they would consult the team's programming lead (Gleb) for advice.

Alongside our ‘chaotic’ group system, we also encourage groupmates to help out one another, or give a shout whenever they need help with something. Since we're collectively pretty active within our team's Discord server, keeping track of who does what and connecting with others on the team is pretty simple due to our team's size.

Scheduling Meetings

We also went over team meeting times again, to keep us on track. Since we all had a little more free time on Wednesday now due to a class finishing, we rescheduled some meetings where possible to accommodate. Now, our team regularly meets on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2pm and 11am respectively, if needed. Ali usually leads our meeting's discussions about what topics need to be covered and attended to based on the work ahead. 

Prior to meetings, our group usually does a vote to see if having a meeting is actually necessary or not. We also evaluate the necessity of a meeting depending on workload from other classes, to see if our time could be better spent. This way, when we do meet, the group's full focus can be on the team's tasks at hand. Our team tries to create a realistic balance with scheduling, so that we can give ourselves enough time to work on the project, but also keep in mind that there are our other priorities and responsibilities for team members to take care of first.

The end for now!

Development is still in its early stages, but going pretty smoothly. We hope that work continues to progress well, and we'll be back to you with another update real soon. See you next time!

- Dopamine :)