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my previous post go here:
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Game pages:
Website: http://mirroredgame.squarespace.com/welcome/
Still under
construction but some areas are now live.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MirroredGame
Crowdfunding: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mirrored#/story
Seminar
in Game production- Postmortem
I think this class was
interesting it started with us making video pitches to the team members that we
wanted to help. I send my 2 videos pitches to 2 different teams than the one I
eventually end up working for. The first week was frustrating because I really
did not want to work for that team. I didn’t like the game concept, the game
art or the story setting. But I have been here before in my life and you do
what you have to do.
I think the course
should be called Seminar in Game marketing since that is what I mostly did for
the team. I think the course should allow the students that have a product or
game like me, to work, create and market their own game or product. If the
student doesn’t have a game or product then they can assist the school’s team
that need assistant with their projects.
I think the course
required an outrageous amount of hours for a 3 credit class-20 hours per week
for 7.5 weeks. I think that is a little too much even for a graduate course. In most colleges or universities, a
student generally receives credit hours based on the number of "contact
hours" per week in class, for one term; more well known as Semester Credit
Hours (SCH). A contact hour includes any class time meetings plus outside time
needed for the student to complete the work. However, SCH is about 15-16
contact hours per semester per credit hour, regardless of the duration of the
course and depending on the state or jurisdiction. So for a 3 credit courses we
are talking about 45-48 hours (SCH) per semester for most colleges and
universities. We did about 160+ hours for this course. I have done more than
that when I did my student teaching but that was for a 12 credit class and 8
week duration. As you can see I think the amount of hours we had to put in for
3 credits, just doesn’t make any sense. I am glad this class in the summer
since this class became my part time job.
I think if the goal of the class is to give you an
understanding of game production perhaps it should focus more on that but I had
other classes already that did that, perhaps the production roles should be
more like when you do student teaching, you start as an observer and then
eventually you take the reins of the class while the teacher observes and gives
you constructive criticism. I think that model could be more productive here
than the current one. The books we read covered the role of the producer but I
really did not get to experience it, since my role was more like a Social Media
Manager than anything else.
I have plenty of experience producing PPTs, videos, flash
animations, I have plenty of Photoshop image creation and manipulation experience,
some game animation and HTML5 and CSS web page creation knowledge but I never
got to do any of that for this team. I could have created many things but
instead I became the Twitter Manager. I created a page to promote the game but
they didn’t like it or wanted to use it. They created their own page and sat
unused for a couple of weeks. I successfully ran it for 7 weeks (from 0
impressions to 11.2K impressions, 0 profile visits to 502 profile visits, 0
tweets to 82 tweets, and from 0 to 163 followers) but they didn’t like it. They
created their own page and it sat idled for 3 weeks, no tweets, no followers,
not much going there. I asked them to let me help with it but it took about a
week or more to actually get access and I finally got it about 3 weeks ago. I
grab that baby and with the little bit of knowledge I recently acquired about
social media, the page has grown to 0 impressions to 21k impressions, 0 profile
visits to 932 profile visits, 0 tweets to 186 tweets, and 0 followers to 276
followers at last counts. The page is thriving and continues to grow each day.
At the start of the course I had no experience promoting
anything using any type of social media. I have never use Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc. to promote anything. Also I never used any
analytics or had any knowledge on how to use them effectively. I can say that
after this class now I have a pretty good understanding of what are the
analytics for all the social medias and how to use them. Connecting with Kim
Garst, Kevan Lee and few others has been a very valuable resource when it comes
to learning about this arena. They have shown me so much and they have provided
me with some many resources, eBooks, PDFs, links to social media blogs, weekly
social media marketing tips newsletters and emails full of golden social media
nuggets.
I am glad that I ended up working with this team because I
see how unprepared the teams I wanted to work were. I was frustrated at the
beginning since not much was happening here. I can really empathize with the
role of the producer at this point even though I was not a producer. It is hard
to oversee all the aspects of the game production but in this case is even
harder since the people doing the work are doing for a class, grade, technically
for free or because they have assigned to it. No passion, no love, and no care
for the product they are making. I would say that is definitely a recipe for
disaster but Ben has done a great job. I would say a little slow for my
managing style but he is progressing at slow pace towards the goal he has set.
If you visit the links provided above you can see the latest from the team and
send us a Tweet, like us on Facebook, and participate in our Indiegogo game campaign.
Thank your reading about this Journey into what is like to
make games at UAT.
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