ETEC544: Game Design Reflection

I don’t enjoy group projects. There are a lot of reasons why I suppose. I’ve been in EdTech for almost ten years now. I’ve been in leadership positions for over five. I have a way of doing things that I like, and that I think get the job done. I also have a pretty well thought out philosophy, both for teaching and learning, as well as game-based learning and the pedagogical practices related to it. I also have a lot of experience teaching game design. So I came into this project with a lot of trepidation. I am though, happy with how our final product turned out and with the learning I was left with now that we’re done.

Our initial attempts to draft a concept faltered. This was frustrating and I was worried it was a harbinger of things to come. We had an interesting opportunity come up to work with a Research Scientist at Intel who wanted to make a game related to Quantum Computing. It was a fascinating prospect, that we knew nothing about! In the end, it didn’t work out, we couldn't find a good time for everyone to get together and discuss the project. One of our teammates living in Japan offered some level of complication to scheduling. I suppose it all worked out better in the long run. The group I worked with was diverse, both in experience and background. I think our shared interests in history and culture helped us end up with a concept we were happy with.

We were able to effectively divide up the responsibilities into three areas that I think aligned to our skills and abilities in the context of game design: Design, Narrative, and Programming. That being said, I personally felt on a number of occasions as though I was carrying much of the decision-making load, in particular with both Design decisions and Narrative decisions. This seems apparent when you review the Slack chat logs. Much of the time it didn’t feel like something happened until I either decided it or pushed for it to happen. It is what it is.

I’d be skipping a big part of this experience if I didn’t, at least a little, reflect on how hard it is to do work like this with a family, during a pandemic, with my grandfather passing away, and starting a new job. It was an intense Winter with a lot going on. I tried my best to manage the projects and I am appreciative of the spare time I was given to get everything done. I tried to maintain a high level of output. It was difficult.

In the end, this project went about as well as I expected. I had to take a slightly larger leadership role than I wanted to but it felt necessary to keep the project on the rails. The final product felt of very high quality - I was proud we were the only group who had a game anyone in the class could play. I wrap up this class with an intense desire to make a commercial game, something I’ve always wanted to do, and I think some added insight into what it takes to get it done. Stay tuned.