Week 1: Shipwrecks and Spreadsheets
Biah S -
Hello all, and welcome to the first official week of my senior project!
To recap, I’m working with a team at ASU in the process of developing a video game for children that’s based around a shipwreck storyline. My main task at my site placement is to look into what’s already been done in the genre of shipwreck games and to compile that information into one place. So far, that’s meant a lot of time spent learning how to use Google Sheets. I’ve been researching different games that already exist out there and inputting different pieces of information about them like the age range they’re targeting and the skills they require their players to exercise into a spreadsheet so it’s more easily accessible. I’m hoping it’ll be a rather comprehensive view into the world of shipwreck games by the end of these ten weeks. Apart from its role at my site placement, I’m planning on using the information I get from this research to determine general trends in what different kinds of games look like depending on different factors like their target audience, intended purpose, etc.
I haven’t just been looking at spreadsheets this week, though. I also attended a meeting for the planning of the game being created by my site placement today! It is in its beginning stages, so there’s still talk about what the game should actually focus on and teach kids that are playing it. That was decided during this meeting, and the consensus was that the game will focus on relationship formation and maintenance in elementary aged children. This means it’ll essentially teach kids how to make friends and keep them. Something that was also brought up frequently was the idea of co-regulation and coordinated movement as a way to bring players closer together. This could be implemented into a game like this by requiring multiple players to complete actions at the same time in order to move forward in the game, similar to how you would play Fireboy and Watergirl with a friend. Those were the main themes brought up in the discussion today, and I’m looking forward to getting more into the specifics of how this will be accomplished in coming meetings. I’ll also be doing more of my own independent research and diving deeper into the artistic side of my project next week, so be sure to stay tuned for that! See you all next week!
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