Capstone Project Pitch

When we were told we would have the opportunity to create and pitch our own game ideas that would be potentially available for use in the senior project, I was thrilled. I really enjoy parts of the higher level design process that we don't always get to do. We often were handed an overall idea and told "make this in a month or less" which is great. Having guide rails saves you falling off the cliff, especially early on. However, being given more freedom was refreshing.

As such, I did a brainstorming session. I had three or four good ideas, but I wanted to throw a few things at the wall just to see if maybe something else would stick. In the end, I chose my front runner from the list I had already drawn up. I thought it had the most potential and the most interesting mechanics and setup.

We had three iterations of the video pitch over the course of the month. Each week receiving feedback from the instructor for our grade, but also from our peers for improvement and critique. In particular we had a very strict time limit of four minutes. We had a long list of things we needed to cover, such as viewpoint, objectives, anti-force, risks, and many more. This created a large challenge to get all of these explained well in a very short time.

In making my final video, in particular I had to find better ways to portray ideas. Creating the prototype seen in two of the videos and using the clip from Master and Commander allowed me to quickly and concisely convey ideas. This was not without issue though, some things are not given clearly enough in my opinion. In particular I would have liked to talk more about the story mode that I had scoped out.

In the end however, I cannot complain about the end result. The project itself recieved permission to move forward into the Capstone program. Even though my team chose not to use this project, it was still an honor for it to be considered.