This week's sprint goals for our game was basically to correct the glaringly awful in our project. Last week, we were finally able to bring our game to QA and it was a mess. Among other things, combat (shooting) in our build wasn't fun (a huge problem when your game largely revolves around that). This week, we put off networking and other to-do list items to try and get the combat and objectives more fun and exciting. Part of this process was for us to gain as much outside feedback from professors on how to address these issues.
To be honest, I was skeptical of the quality of feedback we would get from the various professors we talked to. It wasn't that I didn't believe in their positions, it was simply that I didn't know if we had enough to show them to gain feedback. I also have had feedback some weeks from professors that would essentially throw the project timeline out of whack - and time for us is a very precious commodity with only 2 and a half weeks left. I'm pleased to announce however, that I was dead wrong about the professors feedback. Every single one of them had such good insights that we have recently course-corrected our project (as a whole) and the vert slice to utilize as much of that feedback as possible. Art feedback has already improved the satisfaction of our combat with just a couple of extra steps! Design feedback has also helped us improve our world narrative as a whole, as well as improve our vertical slice objectives.
Feedback critical to my role as producer on the team came from Ben W. He sat down with me and my designer for a good chunk of time and pointed out a major flaw that I had walked into - that I let my team put too much emphasis on networking without having a solid gameplay experience already built. To be clear, our final design still has network cooperative play in mind. Ben pointed out that if our Core gameplay (he called it the "Fantasy") that the player experiences can be done single player (which it can in our game), then networking should never have been as high a priority as it was, and has been. This makes so much sense to me! I'm embarrassed that I didn't see it.
Based on this feedback, and the rest of the feedback from professors, I sat down with my designer and we laid out a full product plan and vertical slice plan of action that was needed. Suddenly, my confidence level in the project is through the rough. There are way less unknown elements now, and way less risk! The only real issue is that these changes need to be made in the next two weeks. I know it's going to be a lot of work for my team, but most of the elements are already there. We just need to re-organize them and set them to work with each other properly. If we can pull that off, then I think there is no chance that this project and team won't move forward into full production. Luckily for me, I have the best team I can think of to pull off this course correction quickly and effectively.
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