Presentation Pros and Cons; Assignment 9A

This week I presented, with my group, the idea and concepts for a video game by the name of High Life.  The player controls the character, Alan, and tries to become the best drug dealer ever.  The game is almost stupidly simplistic, but therein lies the hidden difficulties for us when presenting.  Overall, I think the presentation went rather well, however, I think that perhaps we didn't get across the concept of the mechanics very well to the audience.

To start off with, as mentioned above, I believe that our explanation of the mechanics was to general and not enough detail was offered for the audience to get a grasp for how our game was to be played.  Adam Cesarz, someone from my group, kept describing the game as being similar to a game called lemonade stand, a game that I myself, and probably quite a few people in the audience had no knowledge of and no real explanation was given regarding that relationship/similarity.

A strong point, to contrast the weakness, was our objectives for our game.  Objectives are the mandatory goals set by the game's creators that the player must achieve in order to proceed onwards with the game.  For us, it was that, after earning a certain amount of money selling weed, the player could proceed to selling hallucinogens for a greater profit.  Then, after earning another, larger, certain amount of money selling hallucinogens, the player could begin selling pills and so on.

Probably the most difficult concept area to discuss with others, and I know that this might seem weird, is the concept of goals.  As stated above, objectives are goals that are mandatory and that the player must achieve.  Goal goals are an entirely different beast, as goals are things that the player sets for themselves to achieve, like trying to earn a certain amount of money that isn't required by the game to move on or to buy every cool item for your Ecuadorian Mansion.  It's just that since the goals are completely up to the player to decide upon, how exactly are we, the creators, supposed to discuss them without influencing the players choices.