CSG-110 Retrospectives

This semester has been a great experience. I learned a lot about the game industry and the process of game development. Its been a very bumpy ride and I have a lot of things to work on before next semester. I really enjoyed the style of teaching that Emil and Mike implemented. It kept me interested and always on my toes. I loved working with my team and they taught me just as much as I learned in class. The CSG gave me a new appreciation for video games as a whole. I'm really excited to start next semester and move forward with my education in this program. I finally feel like I discovered what I want to do for the rest of my life.

CSG-110: FAIL, EPIC FAIL!

Hello everyone
So today in class we had our first sprint! I was really excited to actually attempt a sprint, but it didn't go the way I thought it would. We played a game my instructor created called Scrum Hero. Scrum Hero takes the whole scrum process and turns it in to a D&D style game. I was really lost since I was new to the scrum/sprint process and I've never played D&D. We assigned a scrum master (Steve) and product owner (Shea) to oversee the sprint. Steve was in charge of the burn up/burn down chart and Shea was in charge of our backlog. We gave each user story a value in our poker planning session. We did that to organize our user stories according to how important they were.  We took our user stories  and formed teams around  each user story. Each team gave each user story a time limit. each time you completed a task it was marked on the burn-down chart. Now, the game itself put a twist on the whole process. The  "Dungeons Master" would randomly hand out cards to each team member to to throw you off. An example of this is I could only talk by singing for 5 minutes. At the end of the day the sprint was a epic fail. We lacked communication and had poor planning at the beginning. It was so bad Emil stopped us, told us we sucked, and sat us down for retrospectives. The point of the game was to show you how bad a sprint can go if you do it wrong. We failed fast and hard but I'm sure the next time we have a sprint we won't make the same mistakes.

CSG-110: Agile in Practice: Planning Poker

Hello everyone.

We started scrum poker planning in my CSG-110 class this week but unfortunately I was really sick and missed class. I'm really kicking myself in the ass for missing it but try as I may I couldn't get out of bed. Lucky for me my team got me up to speed the best way they could and youtube has a lot of videos on poker planning. Poker planning is a scrum card game that helps you prioritize your user stories. By doing this it helps you answer some key questions while keeping your engaged and up to date on the project. I did a little research on how a poker planning game should go and I found this video. So check it out. It's a pretty cool method.

CSG-110 TEH Suck!

Hey guys.

Things have been shaken up in my CSG-110 class. For starters we're down to five people on my team now. Emil really wasn't joking when he said half the class would be gone by midterms.

To date we've now lost Chris (COO) Matt(CIO) Dowell(CFO) Ian(CTO) and Nick(CIO). Even though the workload is heavier on everyone, we get quality work on time now. Cutting the suck has made a major difference in the teams whole attitude. On top of all that, Steve was demoted by Emil form the CEO position. Emil's reasons were valid, he told Steve he was hand holding. The suck is like a cancer and it really screwed us in this class because we lost a great CEO. With all that said I stepped up to the plate and took over the role of the CEO. I'm confident that I will pick up where Steve left off and do well helping lead this project. Now that we have a quality team things should get easier for us in the coming weeks.

CSG-110: Box Art Project PART 3

Hello everyone.

Today is the day we print out our box! This has really been fun, even though it had its frustrating moments. This project was harder than I thought it would be simply because I thought we wouldn't create cover art until after we started the game itself. So we really had to think fast about how we wanted the everything to look. That was easier said then done but we pulled it off! Check out the finished box!

CSG-110: Box Art Project PART 2

Hello everyone.

So this week we put all of our ideas together and created the image for the whole box. Steve created a placeholder board for the game play image on the back of the box and Darrin kicked ass with the cover. We're starting to put everything together now so take a look!

CSG-110 Box Art Project PART 1

For the next two weeks we will be working on our box art for our final presentation.

For those of you who don't know what box art is, box art is the cover art you see on every game case.
We broke down our task on trello and each team member chose a task. I chose to work on the trademark/copyright statement seen on the back of all games. That was pretty easy. Then the gears in my head started turning and I went on a massive Google search to help find a cool image to put on the box. I came across this West African symbol! It means "he who does not know can know from learning."
I thought to myself, this is perfect. Our game Feats Of Enlightenment is an educational board game and it just so happens that this symbol has the symbols meaning has something to do with education. As I was patting my self on the back I looked at the symbol again and realized it looked a lot like a board game map. I made quick call to my team and shared the image with them and they were just as excited as I was. I feel like we're off to a great start with the project and we're going to have an amazing box!

CSG-110: WGDS13 :: Emil Harmsen :: Agile Game Development

Hello everyone.

In my CSG-110 class we're learning agile development methods. The video above is a presentation at the Wisconsin Games Development Summit 2013 (WHDS13) at UW-Milwaukee by my instructor Emil Harmsen. So sit back and check out the video. It is very informative.

MIDWAY.

Tomorrow is Midterms for my CSG-110 class and I know two things are happening: peer reviews and cuts. Dunn-dunn-dunn! Even though I'm pretty confident that I won't be getting cut, I'm still a little nervous. You never know when dealing with Emil. LOL. As far as peer reviews are concerned, I'm not too worried. I get along with pretty much everyone on  the team and I'm always contributing. I finally finished Udacity and I really enjoyed it. I've also decided to take the Computer Programming course that they offer because it's more visual and I want to learn everything I can learn. I learn better from seeing things. I'm a hands-on/visual learner. This will also be my eighth blog post. I'm really trying to cross my T's and dot my I's, so to speak. For I know that Overlord Emil is afoot!

The Customer is Always Right

Hey, guys!

I've been really busy lately with pushing our survey. I posted it on a few forums and blasted it on Facebook. I even talked to a few people after they took the survey. I received some pretty good feedback. On udacity Steve Blake talked about getting out of the office and connecting with the people, and I see why: it’s very effective. The few people I talked to didn’t just tell me what they would like out of our game but also what they didn’t like about games that are currently out. It was interesting to say the least. Since then I’ve talked to my team about newfound data I came across and now I know we're headed in the right direction. With midterms only a few days away I feel more confident in myself and my team going in to the second half of the semester. Every week we understand a little bit more about the industry and the whole process of creating/ selling a game. I have learned a lot about being proactive, and also about really connecting to the customer’s needs and wants in order to provide them with a stellar product. I have learned that the type of game we want to create is sought-after. I know it sounds like cliché but there’s something to the saying “The customer is always right.” 

The following URL is the survey:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14h8BJJ4Fr7nLK8VU46v-aET_FuFb90vgfAxy01UTWPQ/viewform

You're Fired!!!

Hello world.

I'm back again with more news about our company. I'm sad to say, we had to make our first cut...Oh who am I kidding, its GREAT news! We had to let Nick go and, to be honest, I’m happy about it. I'm not saying he was a bad guy but, perhaps he just wasn’t meant for this program. He never participated in class, he never made it to any of our video conference calls and he never ever did any of the research assignments! So with that said... I'm very happy to get rid of the dead weight! No love lost, no love found. I know it sounds harsh but it's the best thing for the team. And that’s what matters. Even though this is only a class, I’m taking it serious as if I was already in the industry. I told myself before I even started the program that if I want to succeed this time around, I have to treat school like it’s a job. So, that’s what I’ve been doing.

But hey we're still doing great. We've been doing just fine with one CIO from day one. Since the Nick issue has been taken care of, we as a team can stop stressing about the situation and focus on the task at hand. 

Life as a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)

What’s up, guys?

In the past week I’ve learned that marketing can be rewarding, yet frustrating. Darrin and I have been very busy with getting our marketing plan together. We already know our target market. We have been working hard on our business model canvas (BMC) and completing our Udacity training. What is Udacity, you say? Udacity is a free online school that has lessons on various subjects such as start-ups, computer programming and entrepreneurship. I like it a lot. Right now I am taking the “How to Build a Startup” class.

Since we as a team have picked our intellectual property (IP) and genre, Darrin and I have been working on figuring out the best way to reach our target demographic. We've done a lot of research....A LOT! But it's really paying off. We've figured out what forums/ web sites we can advertise on for free and we did our homework on paid advertisement. We have a pretty good idea how we're going to get the game out there. It’s not going to be as easy as making a Facebook page. Steve and Chris put a survey together on Google Docs to gather some feedback on what people want in a game. The feedback has been really helpful to us in marketing because we can really zero in on our target customers. But with that being said I need to get back to doing some more research. Data is key!

We Are Newbie Games!!!

Hello World!! Welcome back.

Things have picked up! We have set up our corporate structure. I chose the role of co-Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) along with Darrin Alston. We also appointed our Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Operating Officer (COO), Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO).

Steve Chepp - CEO

Chris Rich - COO

Matt Fields - CIO

Nick Powell - CIO

Ian Richard - CTO

D’Merro Hull - CTO

Dowell Epps - CFO

Jordan Pinkos - CFO

We've also drafted all of our legal documents. We now have a mission statement and declaration, non-disclosure agreements (NDA), Working Agreement and IP Ownership Agreement. Now the fun begins.

First Impressions

The first day of my Intro to Computer Simulation and Gaming (CSG) class, I truly realized what I had gotten myself into. Our instructor, Emil, started off his lecture with "YOU ARE HERE TO FAIL!" I thought, really? WTF? As he continued speaking I started to understand the method to his madness. He said that failing is the only way we’re gonna learn because, “once you fail, hopefully you won’t make the same mistakes again.” He also said, “I am not an instructor, I’m a coach. You all are your own teachers. I’m only here to facilitate.” (I’m paraphrasing.) He kind of got to me. I’ve always worked hard on everything I set my mind on. I am at a point where I am tired of just getting by. I decided to do something about it. I’m the father of an eighteen-month-old little boy for whom I want to set a good example. I want him to learn how to ignore the naysayers and do whatever makes him happy. I also don’t want him to ever know how it feels to be in poverty. I have struggled my whole life… hell, I’m still struggling! I don’t want him to go through what I have gone through. But I am digressing. Emil split the class up into two teams and each team is a startup company. My team’s company is called Newbie Games, and I must say we have a pretty bad-ass team! Only time will tell who's serious or not, but I have a feeling this program isn’t for the faint of heart. I’m ready for the challenge. I just hope Emil doesn’t kill us in the process.

I Survived Global Game Jam 2014!!!

Global Game Jam 2014 (#GGJ14) was my first "jam" and a great look into the game development process. If I had to describe it in one word it would be intense. Originally I wasn't even going to participate in the jam, but on the way home from class I was talking to my lady about class. It went like this:
         "So this weekend they're having this thing called the Global Game Jam. You stay up for 48 hours and design a game," I said.
         "Sounds cool. Are you trying to go?"
         "Hell no! One, I don't know anything. Two, I don't think they'll like me without 48 hours of sleep. Maybe next year."
         She gave me a creepy grin and said, "You should go. It would be a great experience. You have a lot more to offer than you think."
         "Maybe."
I thought about it for the rest of week. In the end I decided to do it. Okay, I thought. It's jam time.

I was a part of the first/second semester student group, "the n00bs."

With some head-butting and a great leader, we successfully completed a board game called "Catnip Tails." We were also in the process of creating a Unity version of the game but we ran out of time. And energy. In the first 24 hours we had a full-functioning board game. By the middle of the second day we had the game fully tested.

Here's a picture of the board in it's infancy:

Here's some pics of the game in Unity:

Even when things looked grim while being energy-drink high and sleep-drunk, we managed to keep things moving. Personally, the GGJ was an amazing experience. I learned that I had more to offer than I thought. I ended up helping with the game design and I was the lead on the sound effects /music for the Unity version. I also learned that when working with a team you won't always get along, but when you play to your strengths, personally and as a group, great things can happen. We actually won the game jam! That's right, the n00bs kicked ass! I was surprised because there were so many other interesting games that I still would love to play. But it still feels good to be the champ.

Here's the finished board game:

This is the Intro.

Ever since I was a kid I've been obsessed with video games. It all started with Super Mario Bros. I remember being a child and thinking how amazing it was that I could control something on TV and have so much fun doing it. I was home schooled with six brothers and a sister, so I had more time at home than the average kid. We lived in a bad neighborhood and we never traveled, so video games were my escape.

This blog is for my Introduction to Computer Gaming and Simulation class. After so many years playing games I've decided that there's nothing that I would love to do more than to create games that I love. So this blog will be used to document my journey from game addict to game creator.