Week 1: Team Discussion

Monday 31st January 2022

WEEKLY TEAM DISCUSSIONS

Kiera and I have decided to schedule in weekly discussions for our project, to ensure we keep up to date with design and development and make sure we produce a successful final outcome. We have agreed every Monday we will have a team discussion to discuss what happened the previous week and what our next steps will be. To start this week, we must talk about what our plan for the week ahead is and this must be focused on refining our scope and the branding of both our team studio and game.

WHAT SHOULD WE COVER?

Discuss previous week, what went well and what didn't.
What changes do we have to make? (If any)
New research findings or supportive research/information.
Next steps for the following week, what we aim to cover. Refer to schedule and aim to keep on track at all times.

OUR FIRST TEAM DISCUSSION!

Monday 31st January

NOTES:

"We need to be more reasonable with our project scope" - Kiera
Have 12 weeks of development time and our schedule is already extremely tight!
Worried about the amount of time we have and we agree that we need to disregard certain elements.
Idea is great and our supportive app would have provided our players with more support post-experience, although would require more development time and a heavy focus which we don't have.
Application is unfeasible as well as physical space experience
Agreed that our final deliverable will be much more powerful and refined on its own, as a singular experience.
We can use the next 12 weeks to focus more on the visual and sound design which are the most important features of our experience.
Agreed that a good option would be to remove the mobile game idea and spend the first few weeks of this Semester refining our space gameplay.

CONCLUSION

NEXT STEPS

Next steps we have agreed to refine the project scope and think about what we might display in the space - how will players interact?
Refer to the Agile Methodology to create our key milestones and re-create our schedule. We can then distribute tasks according to our new scope.
Simpler task distribution and assign roles to these tasks - what are our individual skill-sets?
Using what we learned from Year 2 - we can use our knowledge of how long these processes take to create an accurate and efficient timetable/schedule.
Using Phase 3 research and surveys we can make informed decisions regarding subject matter of our space, gameplay and interactions.
Next 2 weeks must be spent thinking about our Image and Branding - what will our logo be and what is our game/studio name? Brainstorm!

EVALUATION & REFLECTION

WHAT WENT WELL?

Kiera and I know our position and are aware of what we have to do to progress. Having disregarded the application idea, it was a huge weight off our shoulders and I feel much better about the scale of our scope. We can now focus on the most important features of our essential experience and produce a final outcome that will fulfil our initial intentions. The supportive app would've required additional prototyping and testing, almost as if we are creating two games at once! So this is certainly the best solution for the both of us. I know now that we can easily distribute the development of this experience between us and I feel much happier knowing we have the time to achieve everything we'd like to.

WHAT DIDN'T GO WELL?

We are still unsure about the interactions or subject matter within the space, but know this is something we will eventually unravel through surveys and creative thinking. We know it's now necessary to re-create our project management schedule which'll require a little bit of time to assign timeframes and dates to every task, but it's something we must do to ensure we keep on track. After refining our project scope this is something we should do immediately and the rest will follow.

CHANGES WE HAVE TO MAKE THIS WEEK:

This week we will be focusing on refining the project scope by disregarding elements and only including what is most important. This will adjust our entire schedule/time-table but is the highest on our priority list as of right now. As we have only just begun this Semester, these weekly discussions will become more detailed throughout the project and I am aware more changes or adjustments will have to be made.

NEXT STEPS FOR THIS WEEK:

This week we will be mainly focusing on two areas. Refining the scope and Branding. Tomorrow we have a guest lecture on Image and Branding which'll encourage us to think about the way we present our brand, ourselves and creating a logo etc. Therefore, Kiera and I have agreed that the next two weeks should be focused on building our brand and reducing the scale of our idea.

TRELLO - UPDATED TO DO LIST

https://trello.com/invite/b/XQyFGSIT/821d9c2572f15025b306d2268f14624a/getaway-project-management

MY PERSONAL TASKS

Completion: By 14th February

Brainstorm and mind-map most important elements of our game. This'll help to scale down the size of our scope and be clearer with what we should be making.
Highlight issues with our proposal and how to overcome them.
Map a simplified version of our scope based on discussion with Kiera.
Marketing research - how to successfully market and promote a game via social media?
Set-up social media platforms

TEAM ASSIGNED TASKS

Completion: By 7th February

Brainstorm game name and studio name with Kiera.
Create some draft logo concepts.