IGDA Chapter Meeting Notes, June 1, 2011

New Leadership team announced:

Chair: Matt Brenner

Vice Chair: Ryan Harbinson

Treasurer: Tristin Hightower

Secretary: Jackie Awesome

Upcoming Events:

IGDA Picnic in July

Pecha Kucha (mini presentations) in August

see http://www.pecha-kucha.org/night/philadelphia/newsletters/2108 for model

Other:

Shenendoah Studio (located in center city) is looking for testers and possibly paid positions

Miguel is looking for testers for Starfox

- 7:20 - 8:35 Presentation of “A Better World” by with ToonUps; Sr. Game Designer, Mike  Sweeney
The original concept was to make a game that could inspire real-world positive behavior.  Their motto is “Do Good - Look Good”.  

It is set up like a village with shops and countryside to visit. The traditional house and avatar customization is linked to quests at Do Good locations such as giving thanks at the “Gratitude Grotto” or playing “Positive Puzzler”

Initial brainstorming was mostly done with a team new to games, so they started by creating several mini-games to get used to the language.

The main game was too complex to have ready by launch (Thanksgiving), so they created a scaled-down demo with only two locations.  

Reasons it got complex:

Flash games usually have 2 levels of quality, A Better World has four levels.   

The Facebook platform changes erratically, requiring last-minute scrambles.  

The game they wanted to build was very large.

After the main launch, they started developing in two-week “work sprints” between releases.  

Problems   they ran into  with programming:

Pets required a special quadraped            walking engine

Click-to-walk was creating problems with people moving in shops -

detailed analysis with Kontagent led to a new Click-and-hold-to-walk that fixed this

- 8:35 - 8:55 Q&A