Blogs - Flubfighter

Prior to this internship, I did not know what exactly I would be doing for the team. One

thing that I did know however was that I was going to learn a lot throughout this internship.

During this project, I was able to work on concept art, digitally paint backdrops, and help create

the Logo for the game. Because of the wide range of work that needed to be done, it is easy to

see the amount of improvement that I have had over the course of this internship. I was also able

to see how important it was to work as a team, as well as the importance of communication

between each gaming degree. On previous projects, I would only work with the artists; however

it would be very difficult to complete the game if this was the case, which is one reason why a

lot of games do not get developed. From all of the different things that I have learned while

working on Flub Fighter, the biggest thing would be how to effectively manage time. There were

a lot of situations where we needed to get a lot done, and had a very little amount of time to do it.

By prioritizing the work based on the importance of the task, the work was easier to maintain

during this short time period, allowing the team to accomplish everything that needed to get

done. So far, this is the farthest game project that I have been a part of, and I am looking forward

to continuing to progress this game to the best that it can be.

-Jacob Gernand

This week we are presenting our pitches to the rest of team. I'm feeling really prepared with this new

game idea I came up with, with a bit of help from Tyler and Harrison. After scrapping the other idea, I

came up with several others. I had several pages of notes written down with descriptions, pictures, and

random thoughts that I thought could be interesting to play around with. The problem with this was

narrowing it down to one quality idea that would appeal to the team. I asked for help from Tyler to help

me with this task, seeing which one he thought had the most promise and then helping me expand on it

and refine it.

The big idea that I stuck with was Trouble in Taffy Town, a casual game for mobile that worked sort of

like a cooking game mashed up with a defense game. You play as a cook defending a castle from an

onslaught of candy troops. In order to destroy the troops, you had to do different touch commands in

order to destroy specific types of candy, like tapping on peppermints or swiping a lollipop. When you

defeat them, you can use them in recipes to create power-ups or to appease the king, it depends on the

game type.

I feel really prepared to give the pitch. I have created a solid power-point with some example art and a

really good description of gameplay. I even have the research I did that use other popular games as

examples. It feels really well rounded and I hope I have every point in there well made.

Both meetings pretty much covered more things we needed to know about pitching and further into

everyone’s roles. I'll probably be doing level design of some sort. I'm really excited to jump into game

development pretty soon. I'm itching to learn new skills and such to advance myself. I want to be able to

take whatever I learn during this internship and apply it to whatever position I can get into in the actual

game development space. It's going to be a lot of fun.

-Joe Keigher

Before the team decided on Flubfighter we first had a game pitch session. This is our designer Barret's thoughts and experience doing a game pitch.

My boss here at Retora said that pitching was kind of a game designer's bread and butter. It

makes sense. Pitching is the thing that allows game designers to properly sell their ideas, and recently I

have taken part of a pitch session for the internship company that I have been working for to see what

game we were going to make for this semester. The process taught me a lot about how to sell one's idea

and especially on understanding who your selling a game to.

My journey to pitching a game idea started when Retora's boss, Tyler, announced at a internship

meeting that they members of the team were going to have a chance to pitch the game that the team

was going to be making. The game could be anything we could think of, but it is a good idea to think up a

game where the team could finish a vertical slice of the game done in a signal semester. The next day I

decided to start by brainstorming up some new game ideas by myself since I wasn’t working with

anyone else on the project. I had a few game ideas that I had written down before, but after I review

them again, I decided that none of those ideas would fit with the internship team. Now this is the part of

the story that gets a little fuzzy. I can’t actually remember the exact details on how I came up with the

idea for that game I ended up pitching. I just remember that I came up with the idea for Smash Odyssey

during my brainstorming session. Smash Odyssey was an idea for an adventure game for mobile and

tablet where the player had to help a guy get home from the club while he was completely high on

hallucinogens. Out of all the ideas that I thought up, Smash Odyssey was the best that I came up with, so

I decided to go with it.

The first time I told others about my idea was at a design team meeting. Tyler decided that part

of the meeting was going to be an informal pitch session for the designers, so we all went around the

room telling each other our ideas. After I gave the other designer my brief summary on Smash Odyssey,

the biggest criticism of my idea is that it was kind of devoid of game mechanics. At the time, I had only

come up with a theme and basic story idea for my game, and I still needed to flesh out the gameplay

and mechanics. The mechanics were kind of hard for my to think up. I based my game around the

adventure game model, which normally have very little gameplay in order to focus more on puzzle

solving and story. I needed to think of a way to put a spin on the adventure game formula that fit with

my hallucinogen based idea. I spent an afternoon thinking up ideas, without come up with anything. I

was finally able to come up with something when I went to get a hot dog at hot dog stand near the

Arizona Mills Mall. I decided that the player would control the main character in the game world by

drawing hallucination on the screen that would direct the main character through the environment.

With this new idea, I decided that it was time to see what other people thought of the idea at the first

practice pitch session.

Tyler was holding practice pitch sessions for people to get feedback on their ideas, so I went to

the Saturday practice session. I gave my pitch and the group decided that I now need to flesh out the

story that I was going to tell more. At that point, I only had a basic idea of what I wanted Smash

Odyssey's story to be. Tyler told everyone to go out and work on our ideas for an hour and then meet

back up at the same place to give another pitch session. I went to research stuff on erowid.com on Tyler

recommendation to try drug story to get story ideas from. While looking I found a research paper on

drug themes used in science fiction. I read over the paper until a section of the paper on mind-

controlling drugs caught my eye. I did a few google searches on mind-controlling drugs until I found a

Vice documentary on Scopolamine. Scopolamine is a drug that can be found in Columbia that kind of

suppresses the free will of the person under the drugs effect so that other people to make them do

anything that they want them to do. This was the thing that could make my basic drug story a little more

interesting. I changed Smash Odyssey's story to be about a guy who was drugged by thieves who want

to guide him home so that they can steal all of the main character's stuff. I put this idea into a

PowerPoint presentation and went to the second practice pitch with it.

I gave my Scopolamine idea to the other designers at the second practice pitch and some of

them like the idea. The criticism that I got from Tyler is that I needed to work on characters more, and

he also directed me to a few articles to read. Tyler also told me to watch Upstream color, which is a

movie that is kind of hard to decipher. I watched it anyway and was utterly confused, but it showed my

how I could turn my Scopolamine idea into a workable story. I watched the movie in the morning of the

day before the actual pitch. After I watched the movie, I spent the rest of the day thinking up ideas for

characters, and I didn’t have much luck on this front. The only idea I was able to come up with for the

characters is to have the head thief appear to the main character as a hallucinated god. It wasn’t much

but I put it in the presentation anyway.

On the day of the pitch, Tyler decided to have one last practice pitch session before the actual

pitches. I went and gave my pitch, and the last thing that the others said that I needed was a good

gameplay example. I used the little time I had to come up with a gameplay scenario about the player

trying to get his car back from a tow lot, and with that added, I was ready to do the pitch.

I went first for the actual pitch. Tyler asked to see who wanted to go first and no one

volunteered, so why not go first. My presentation was ok. I had a problem where I stumbled over my

words a little bit too much, and I ended up unnecessarily repeating things. I focused so much of my time

on the idea that I should have spent some time making presentation notes. I probably should have

practiced giving my presentation by myself just so I don’t flub my lines as much. At the time I still didn’t

feel like I did a bad job though, and I felt told the team my idea pretty well. But then I got that feedback.

The feedback I got back for my presentation was not that good. A lot of people didn’t

understand what I was going for, or just didn’t like my idea. This probably proves that I should have

thought more about my presentation to make it more clear what my idea was. I also got a lot of

feedback saying that my idea was out of scope, which points to my idea still being a little too big for this

internship.

Even though I did win the pitch, I still learned a lot about both my team and pitching in general.

The intern team for Retora is basically like an indie game studio, so I should have gone with a game idea

that was more based off a cool mechanic rather than a story. Mechanics take less time to make than

stories. If I was smarter about this, I would have realized this earlier and come up with a different idea.

The biggest thing I learned from this pitch is how important it is to understand who you are selling your

idea to, and what types of games they would be into.

By:

Barret Gaylor-Designer