Managerial postmortem

Student group members would say in perfect unison “With little or no experience, we did our best, to make the game”, to summarize the project. But individual student members in different minors might bring different overlook on the project. From a perspective of a project manager I would like to summary the project itself in following parts: goal, purpose, playtesting, prerequisites, and progress.
Project goal. The goal of the project to produce the game according to the concept and course requirements […]

Prototyping, testing, and play testing

Each of them has the same goal but different purpose – game prototyping, software testing, and play testing are important processes during digital game development as they all improve quality of the game product. Prototyping helps game designers to validate ideas and concepts, whereas software testing helps developers to detect errors and bugs in codes. Usually, prototyping and software testing are conducted frequently by internal members of the development team, i.e. designers, developers, and artists. Play testing is a process […]

Missing minor in digital audio design

Developing a digital game in a group of five game design students in four minors – game design, programming, graphics, and project manager, some may note that one minor is necessarily missing. In a cross-functional small team developing a game, optimally anyone can take a part as a sound designer, and contribute to the project in a best way as he or she can, although quality may vary, based on previous experience, skills, musical nature and nurture. Some student groups […]

Task prioritization with MoSCoW

Prioritizing tasks started to be key activity during our sprint planning meetings. As soon as the student group were approaching to release the alpha, different methods were tried to find optimal way how to prioritize tasks in a sprint. When we adopted Scrum in the student project, we were still continuing in a method we used before, that could be close to Eisenhower box method, which is a relatively simple technique using urgent/important principle, which helped us to think about […]

Flip a paper prototype to digital in 5 days

To initiate works on the student shoot-em-up game project, and to open a group discussion about development, I prepared a paper prototype to specify movement mechanics and dynamics. Then I asked the team to flip the paper prototype to a digital prototype, using Unity2D and C#. The purpose of the paper prototype was to clarify the basic movement mechanics of the character in 2D Euclid space, whereas the digital prototype was requested to test the current abilities of the team […]

Flip a paper prototype to digital

To initiate works on the student shoot-em-up game project, and to open a group discussion about development, I prepared a paper prototype to specify movement mechanics and dynamics. Then I asked the team to flip the paper prototype to a digital prototype, using Unity2D and C#. The purpose of the paper prototype was to clarify the basic movement mechanics of the character in 2D Euclid space, whereas the digital prototype was requested to test the current abilities of the team […]

Note about concept document

As soon as development team is requested to choose the concept document for their first video game, but which is not their own concept, it raises disputable questions about level of acceptance and obedience to the concept. What does the concept document require for developers and artists? How much does the concept limit creativity? How to apply MDA framework to the concept document? Why to follow the concept document? In brief, the concept document is an […]

Note about concept document

As soon as development team is requested to choose the concept document for their first video game, but which is not their own concept, it raises disputable questions about level of acceptance and obedience to the concept. What does the concept document require for developers and artists? How much does the concept limit creativity? How to apply MDA framework to the concept document? Why to follow the concept document? In brief, the concept document is an essential and multi-purpose document, […]