Journal 7

 

• Who are you, and what authority do you have on the topic of your project

My name is Matt Eaton, and I am in charge of the game design aspect of this particular project, so, although I am not in charge of the entire thing, I am in charge of what is arguably the most important part, or if not the most important part, the foundation, because the game is what everything else in the project sprouts from.  Essentially, I am an important piece of our group project, and like everyone else in the group, I am a lynch pin.  

• How clear and consistent is your reasoning for why you want to make this project?

We talked about this in class, and since that moment, my answer hasn't changed.  I want to create this project in order to make a game that spurs imagination in people because I fear that we as a culture are severely lacking in imagination due to an influx of movies, video games, and the like, so children no longer have to "create" anymore, instead they're  just handed things.  The game I am designing is a tabletop RPG, or an "imagination" game, similar to games like "Mafia" and "Questions", or games that have a small amount of rules that allow the players to go about creating and telling a story.

• What are you communicating with this project that the audience you are targeting doesn't already know?

I am communicating the idea that whether they know it or not, anyone can imagine, anyone can create their own stories and worlds, and together with a group, the can create a cooperative story.  On top of that, I hope that with the game I can encourage the idea of teamwork among the players and their characters.

• How will people remember your project?

I hope people will remember my project as a fun and simple to learn game, that allows them to tell and create memorable stories and characters which they will be excited to talk about with their friends.  I want them to leave capstone night wanting to play another session of the game, and hopefully, if all goes according to plan, I can leave them with a free copy of the rules, so that they will always remember it and be able to play at least a very simple version of it.

• What are you motivating people to do in your project?

I am motivating people to imagine and create the way they used to when they were children on the playground.  I am trying to recreate that spark in people that everyone seems to have when they are young, but seem to lose as they grow older.

• How will you bring your project to life in the minds of the audience?

I plan to tell them about it in a handful of presentations, where I run through a quick five minute presentation of the game.  I am relatively charismatic and am excited about this project so I think  I will be able to pass my excitement onto them.  I also hope to be able to run at least a game or two during the capstone so that people who are interested can get a chance to play the game and see whether or not they like it.

I plan to focus more on explaining what a tabletop RPG is, because I found that some people didn't really grasp the idea, as well as explain what imagination games are and back up my position on why I think we're losing imagination this generation.  Also, I hope to briefly present my game to the class (it's fairly simple) so they can see some of the mechanics at work, and perhaps have a rule set that can be passed around the class.  

Other than that, I got mostly positive results from my answers. (I wasn't able to present in class due to sickness, although I did hear about some of the issues that occurred that day.)  Hopefully my changes will be good enough to make my presentation excellent.

Journal 6 and Golden Circle

If you recall my earlier journal, my word was "imagination".

Essentially the reason I chose that word, or the "why" of my project is that I think that today, with the inception of the internet and the ability to instantly access almost any sort of entertainment you could possibly want, from games, to movies and videos, and so forth, I think that people in general are losing their imagination.

I'm going to don my "old fogie" hat for a moment and say that back in my day, kids didn't have cell phones that they could connect to the internet with, if they managed to have a cell phone at all, not too many kids had Gameboys or other handheld entertainment devices, they couldn't easily access the web due to the vast majority of internet connectivity being dial-up, and so forth.  To entertain ourselves, we had to actually get outside to play kickball or something, or if we didn't have enough people, we had to invent some way for 3-4 people to entertain themselves for the next couple hours.  Sometimes we would come up with some weird sport similar to "Calvinball" from the popular comic Calvin and Hobbes, sometimes we would pretend that we were robots or pirates or ninjas and run around someone's backyard fighting each other with sticks, however, as we got older and these things became more socially unacceptable, we began looking for other things that we could do.

This is where my fascination with tabletop roleplaying games came into play.  A roleplaying game is essentially an imagination game, where you create a character who you take the role of and then as for what happens next, relies entirely on your imagination.  There are some mechanics in place that allow you to succeed or fail, usually in the form of rolling dice: roll a high enough  number and good things happen, roll too low and terrible things happen.  The most popular example of this sort of game would be Dungeons and Dragons, but many many more exist.

I think that these sorts of games are beneficial for people for multiple reasons.  First and foremost, they require you to flex your imagination, to create situations, people, and places that don't actually exist and tell stories with them.  Secondly, you have to play with at least one other person, so it forces you to interact with others, and if you want to succeed, to work as a team.  Finally, it forces you to think abstractly and solve problems in unconventional means.  All of these things are why I enjoy tabletop roleplaying games, and why I decided that I wanted to do one for my capstone.

So now that we've got all the back story out of the way, let's get to the meat of the whole thing: the golden circle.

Now I understand that's small so I'll write what it says here:

- Why - People are losing imagination, and we  as a society need to somehow rekindle it.

- How - By creating something fun and exciting that encourages and rewards them to use their imagination.

- What - A tabletop roleplaying game with simple rules and mechanics that allows them to create and have fun doing it, without getting bogged down by too many rules.

Now, as you can see, the arrow is going out from the middle.  This is because when I was originally working on the idea, I had thought of doing a board game, but after some thought, I realized that a board game, although it works the imagination in its own right, is far too rigid for what I wanted, and decided to instead do a roleplaying game, which is much looser and more cohesive to imagination, since it is essentially a massive game of "pretend" like kids play, and I don't think there is much out there that's more imaginative than games of pretend.

I think that using the method of why first will make explaining it a lot easier, especially to people who don't know what a roleplaying game is, or who dislike the idea of Dungeons and Dragons, passing it off as "the devil's game". (Yes, there are still some people who believe that even after all these years)  I think that explaining it this way will remove a lot of the aversion or distaste that might be towards these sort of games.  I also think that it's the easiest way for me to explain it, if I went the other way, I don't know if I could logically explain my capstone to the people I was presenting to.  Maybe I could, but it wouldn't be as succinct and clear.

Now, as for what I would like to do after I finish this project, frankly, I'm not sure.  I do know that I really enjoy working on board games and roleplaying games, as I've been making them in my spare time for a while now, so if there's some way to do that for a living, I would be more than overjoyed to do it.  Personally, I would love for the capstone to be a marketable product, perhaps put it on Kickstarter and get it funded and start a small start up with the people on my team.  I think that would be the best possible scenario, however I think that it might also be the most outlandish, as I'm not even entirely sure how good the game will turn out.

I think if it came right down to it though, what I would like to do after all this is to somehow keep creating games, and get paid for it.  I think if that was something I could do, it would make me happy.

Journal 5

One word to describe my capstone:

Imagination.

Journal 4

For class today, we had to split off into pairs and present our capstone to someone who knew nothing about it, in the hopes that we could see if there were any problems with our presentations, or if we were in a group capstone, if there were different views on what the capstone should be.  I am in the latter example, working together with two other people in the class and so I'm interested in seeing just how different my description of the capstone was compared to Cabana's and Alec's description. 

I got partnered with Deandra Williams and her explanation of the capstone was rather succinct, this was due in part to the fact that she didn't really have a solid idea of what her capstone would be, but what she did know she explained rather well.

She is planning to work together with some, as of yet undecided, non for profit organization and she wants to incorporate media arts and science with them in order to make them more accessible.  She received inspiration from Steven Manmheimer's Museums and Media class, in which they tour various museums around Indianapolis in an attempt to see which are using media, which aren't, and to come up with ways for them to better utilize it.  After studying two different museums, she realized that many of these places are severely under utilizing information technology and could greatly benefit from it.  

That was about as in depth as she got into her concept since she still has many unknown variables, but she did say that her target audience would be the youth, from college age to about four to five years old, because she wants to involve the younger generation with these great non for profit organizations and she feels that media information technology would be the easiest way to do that with a generation that has been raised on the internet.   

Journal 3

Note: Sean (Cabana), Alec, and I all worked on this particular journal.

After we applied the 7Ps and other methods of creative concept development to our project, I feel we really hit the proper scope for the capstone. Recognizing that we need a way to allow space for those who don’t want to participate, was a great step. Also, realizing we needed to separate the event night game from the tabletop role playing game was an epiphany. These things did not in any way diminish my excitement for the project and if anything, stoked the spark of our idea into a fire. Further, I think we could apply the 7Ps to each individual element of our overall project as well. Alec’s game in the Cave is going to have very different answers than anything we place in M.A.R.L.A. due to their differing locations and differing fame/infamy.

I’m most excited about the large team aspect of our assignment, as well as the gaming. Working together with so many other talented people, will enhance everyone’s personal project and create a stronger immersive experience. Hopefully this will entertain capstone attendees and encourage greater attendance rates, as well as increase the amount of time each attendee spends at the capstone event itself. I love the gaming aspect, there are so many levels of gaming in our project. The event night game, the individual games in each room, we may even try to introduce a mobile game if our team expands. Now, due to this project being assigned at the same time as my N431 Serious Games class assigning an Ancient Game creation exercise, we may even have mini-games in this vein strewn about.

Another thing we figured out while using the 7Ps idea was that the tabletop rules version of the game will not coincide with the actual “ARG” (alternate reality game) being played on capstone night.  The same themes and some of the rules will be there, but since the tabletop is slowly becoming more and slightly more complicated, there’s frankly too many rules to go over with that many people, that quickly, so we will keep the same basic idea as the tabletop, but it will not be the exact same rules as originally planned.  

Journal 2

Another short class this past Tuesday, can't say that there was a whole lot of things covered, seeing as how it was only a 20 minute class, however we were given a decent amount of notes on the 7 P's, something that we had already talked about in the Teambuilding and Technology class.  That being said, it was a nice refresher and the information is a decent subject to talk about.

Granted, I've always heard the 7 P's in a slightly different manner: "Proper Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance", but I liked these P's as well.

Journal 1

Today's class was mostly a sort of "get to know you" and feel out the course day, as are most classes this week, so there wasn't exactly a ton of learning going on today.  However, I do think I still learned some things from today's class.

First and foremost of course would be that there's a difference between project management and project development, which I hadn't known prior to taking this class, the main difference is that development is during the planning phase and management is during the execution/production phase, so that was a useful bit of knowledge.

I also found out that this course was no longer a capstone preparation class ... so there's that.

But still, I'm looking forward to it, since the team building one was a lot of fun, plus I need help really getting the idea my group has down into some sort of concrete form, so I'm sure this class will help out with that.