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.