I'm really consistent haha

Okay, I'm actually not, but shh. I've been really busy the past few days, that's why I haven't posted anything. I'll make up for that now, however, and I'll make a review post tomorrow! Anyway, let's start with Wednesday. (That rhymes, whoo)

Wednesday

Wednesday was actually quite a productive day! Together with one of our project members I started with the testprotocol for our Quality Monitoring & Implementation. It was kind of confusing at first, but we ended up with something pretty nice. I also had an interview done by another member of our community, to help them with their research and such. After that, we also had a lecture on Quality Monitoring & Implementation, in which we were taught several ways to test our subjects and that we had to document a lot. Like, everything really. After that there was a lecture about programming. Now, I won't be programming for our game, but I did the lecture anyway and I signed up for the lectures that'll follow because I'm interested and really do want to learn all that stuff. 

After that, we did some concepting. We finally got around to doing that as we really couldn't get started with it. First we looked at this roll with a lot of techniques on it, then we choose one. First the Moscow method, in which we named all 'must-have, should-have, could-have and would-have' things. After that I just asked everyone to write down what their idea was, read them through and wrote down the main point. This was necessary because we were going to need to make a paper prototype on Thursday. 

Almost everyone left after we finished that, though no one else had really read things through, they all just seemed to want to leave. I was left behind with one other member of our group and we fixed up our testprotocol according to the new information we'd gotten.

I also went to Mockingjay Part 1 and wow am I not okay with that movie.

Thursday

Thursday we started with a lecture on Game Design. It was actually kind of fun as he used games to explain his point. We were taught about feedback and its importance, and we were taught that we need to think as the user as well. And to never test something on ourselves, because we can't look at it straight. Testing on yourself is only really useful to see if it works at all, I guess, so you won't be having your target group, or experts, test a broken product.

Afterwards we went somewhere else to really get things done, and there we started working on our paper prototype, which included a lot of cutting and sketching. We also got oliebollen, which is this Dutch thing and I don't think there's really a word for it in English. Afterwards, I went along with one project member to a drawing class. It was pretty fun, actually! They were teaching about different materials this time around. While we were gone, the others finished up the paper prototype. (They didn't test it however to see if it worked which was bad and bluh).

Then we went to one of our member's house to eat and chill afterwards, which was also pretty fun :). 

Friday

It's Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday, or something like that.. I was feeling pretty awful to be honest, mostly tired, and really stressed out. I stressed out because I didn't feel like we were really making any progress with things, which sucks. First we had a Photoshop course however, which proved to be pretty useful. In a few more lessons, I'll be able to manipulate pictures and make even myself look pretty, wooohh!

Afterwards, we went to our community classroom and we were supposed to have each other test the paper prototypes. Now, like I said, we never tested ours. I did ask for people to do so, but no one listened. And then we discussed maybe making a task-list, but no one ended up doing that either. So, obviously, they left me to explain everything when people got by, and it was really chaotic and I stressed out even more and had a mini breakdown. I was really glad when all that was over, but I didn't get to go home just yet.

I still had to go to an elementary school, where we were supposed to test our paper prototype as well. Boy, was I glad when I managed to convince the group members that that wasn't going to work, as even people our age couldn't play it properly. We did get to do sufficient research, however, and learned quite a lot about the wishes of our target group. Now, this is good because we only had little information on them before. They told us how much they like being able to customise things. They even like things exploding when things go wrong. We really did get a lot of information on them, and I'm glad that we managed to do at least that.

We also were told that Spilgames is coming by on Tuesday to look at our concept and paper prototype. I really hope that we have fixed it up by then, but honestly, I don't know about that. People seemed to be getting a bit more serious, though, even making up a task list for next week.

With this, the first iteration is basically over as well. I'm not too happy about how everything went, but I guess it doesn't really matter. That's all for the last three days, so I hope that's okay! I will be back tomorrow. :)