In our opening session for ELD16, two faculty members from Bloomfield College, and the students they mentored in designing our conference game, describe the process of dealing with design, ideation, decision making, and testing.
A few of the considerations include:
- designing a game meant to be played by an unknown variable number of players
- iterating on a seemingly simple concept repeatedly
- learning from numerous failures
- managing teamwork in a large interdisciplinary team
- meaningfully testing the experience with no way to recreate the intended environment
- mitigating the risks, and getting a handle on all of the moving parts
Panelists outline the guiding principles behind the game, highlight specific design decisions made throughout the process, and discuss the balance of the educational and the humorous.