MassDiGI Game Challenge Follow-Up - Learn from your Peers
My senior project team performed really well at the MassDiGI Game Challenge this past weekend! We presented our game, The EcoKids and the Paper Pests, which I've mentioned in a few previous posts. We won our category of Serious/Indie/Alpha!
The competition was an amazing learning experience. We pitched to indie developers and other college students in part to practice presentation skills, but mostly to gauge how well an outsider could understand the educational message we are trying to teach with our game.
We found that some people were confused on some aspects of the game we thought were obvious. We were asked why the game was called "The EcoKids...", and simply by explaining that the player avatars are the "EcoKids" cleared up all confusion. We also received advise to emphasize the fact that possums aren't predators and indirectly affect the foodchain because that is a common misconception about invasive species. People think that herbivores are harmless and it's only bad to introduce predators, which is false. This is a fact that I thought was obvious, but by explicitly mentioning it adds extra educational value that I hadn't originally thought of.
After the competition, we had a constant stream of people telling us they were really excited about our game and couldn't wait to see it finished. We were told that educational games whose core mechanics are in themselves implicitly educational are hard to come by but especially powerful.
All in all, the competition was extremely inspirational and boosted my confidence in the project. The information and feedback I gathered from my peers will help shape the project as we move into more playtesting and finish up the game over the next few months. If you're a developer in MA, I HIGHLY recommend competing in the game challenge next year. And even if you're not on the east coast, get your game in front of your peers ASAP!