Exhibition Evaluation
Describe your role/input in setting up and supporting the exhibition
The day before the exhibition, Tuesday 28th, myself, as well as a number of other students helped set up the exhibition which would be held and opened to the public over the next two days.
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I was one of the group of people to go to First Site to help set up the exhibition. Upon arriving we were explained the general idea for the set up of the two rooms by a member of the marketing team. This floor plan was also drawn up on a board to allow everyone to have an idea of what is needed to be done.
This wasn't completely followed, however, but the general idea still remained.
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To begin with, I helped with detaching the tables from one another and then moving them around (as when we arrived, there were tables attached together in the centre on both rooms). These tables were moved apart and then moved to different areas of the room with the reason of giving each team their own station to show off their work and resources.
After having the table/area designated for my group, my main part in helping was to set up my own work/resources at my group's table/station but to also make the table look as full and presentable as possible.
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I had a number of resources that I had planned to show off (consisting of my full script, my story creation process, character biographies, game information sheet, and my word search). Now the table was ready, it was just a matter of showing the work/resources themselves.
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The first resource I dealt with was my story creation process. For this, I had a number of slides printed out, which I had hoped to pin/stick to a board or a wall. Luckily our table was positioned in front of a wall, which allowed me to do what I had planned for. And so, I stuck the process on the wall behind my group's table in the form of a timeline.
I felt that this worked quite well, as from left to right, the timeline explained introduced the resource (story creation process), how the project started from a basic concept, and then how I went on to develop that concept into my own concept, and eventually my own story. This not only enabled me to show an area of my work as the team's writer, but it also allowed me to show the process of story creation/development. However, I do feel as though there was some problems.
The first and biggest problem was how once all of the different pages were stuck up on the wall, I realised that some areas of the were more difficult than others. The main reason for this was because the wall wasn't directly in front of you, but was instead behind the table, which I hadn't accounted for. Although this didn't mean that the resource was now useless, it just meant that the viewers needed to move close to be able to read it (but this is something I would have liked to have been improved if I had the time to quickly redo this, most likely by increasing the size of the font/printing in larger paper/more slides).
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One of the next exhibition resources I had set up was my character biographies. The idea for this was to work alongside the character concept artists (Stella and Ellie) and show my biographies with the character art.
As you can (just about) see from the image, this is
something that we managed to achieve. We stuck the character concept art up on the wall (well, the cupboards) and then I was able to stick up my cut up character biographies next to the relevant characters. I feel as though this was effective as you could visually see the character (from the art), as well as read the verbal explanation of the characters.
However, there were some areas in this area that could have been better. The main area was my writing/bios. As I printed out the biographies separately and cut them out, I didn't really think about changing the size of the text. Although at the exhibition, they weren't particularly difficult to read, if the text was a larger size, it'd be more appealing and easier to read for the viewers.
Although as stated, the text was still readable (as they were on the cupboards which stuck out from the wall), and so this problem wasn't the end of the world.
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The third exhibition resource that I set up was my game information sheet. This was a resource that I collaborated with my group to create (marketing and level design), as it made use of one of the poster designs, company name/logo, and the group's social media links for the cover, and then had my sections of writing as well as a piece of writing and in-game screenshots from the lead level designer, Ben.
My idea for this resource was for it to show off the areas of our game that didn't completely make it into the demo game, such as the outline for the protagonist and antagonist, story, and key events.
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I feel as though this was successful in showing the areas of the game that didn't make it in the demo, but I also feel as though the lead marketer who put it together was able to make it appealing and look relevant to the theme of the exhibition, which allowed it to be successful and effective.
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But back to the point, I decided to place one next to the pc with our game, and another on the table that was specifically for our group. The one with the game would then hopefully be read by the people playing the game (although this wasn't the case), and then the one on the desk could be read by those viewing the other resources we had to offer.
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Next, one of the other exhibition resources that I had to show was my script, which had been printed out and bound together. I feel like showing my script was effective as people could see what a script looks like, but then they could also read my story for my group's game.
I decided that the best place to put my script was on my group's designated table, so the viewers would know that the story/script was for my group's game, 'Voyage'.
The final resource that I had set up was my activity, which was my word search. Originally, this was positioned at my group's table, but this was then moved to two tables in another room which was held all of the activities (so they were all in one place).
To begin with, I felt as though a word search wouldn't be that interesting, and almost all of the copies would be left, but this wasn't necessarily the case, as, throughout the two days, I saw a number of people (children and their parents) filling out the questionnaire. Due to this, I feel as though they were shown effectively and were somewhat effective as an activity. However, if they were to be improved, I would have liked to make the look of them be more appealing (maybe including the game logo, as well as some colour), and then also reducing the number of words to make it more simple for kids to complete.
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What went well
There are a number of areas to the exhibition that I feel were successful/went well (in regards to my groups work, and the other groups).
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To begin with, I feel as though the area to the exhibition that went best/was most effective were each of the group's games. I believe this becasue the main area of interest for the majority of the visitors was the computers with the games set up/running on. Most of the people playing the games, however, were kids, but becasue they were there, the parents/carers were also with them watching their children play and enjoy the games. In addition to this, the games were the main interest of the children visiting, and to add to this, it was obvious that they were having fun while playing the games, as you could see and hear them enjoying the experience.
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In addition to this, I believe that this was the most effective area of our exhibition was the games due to the results of the survey. After looking through all of the results, I was able to see that almost everyone who answered question 12 ('Did you enjoy playing the game?') answered 'yes' meaning that they all enjoyed the games that they played (although there were a number of surveys which didn't answer this question, but out of the results, all but one states 'yes').
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Another area that I noticed was rather popular during both days, was the area that had a number of each groups activities. I noticed that a number of parents/guardians took their children to the activities as they waited for the games to become free, and as an activity to do together. There were a number of times where the activity station was required to be cleaned up, as quite a few people were trying the activities that were stationed there.
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In regards to my own work, I feel as though the resources that I showed off were able to get the point that I wanted to get across, across to the exhibition viewers. While at the exhibition over the two days, I was able to see a number of people looking at/reading the resources shown at my group's table. This meant that they were able to see my group's characters (visuals/artwork and writing/bios), read the outline of our game's story, as well as my story script, but also the story development.
Also, during these two days, I spoke to a number of people (some just public visitors and others being first-year students to this course) and was able to explain how the project worked and what was needed to be done.
I feel like this was especially good for the first year students, as it was able to give them a more clear idea of what they would be doing next year (in terms of the project and exhibition).
How could it have been improved
There were a number of areas that related to my group as well as my work that I feel could have been improved and carried out better.
To begin with, I noticed that a lot of my work/resources was going unnoticed and wasn't being read by the visitors (not to say that the work wasn't being read, but there were many people who didn't read). I noticed that a lot of the visitors were children, and for the most part, they were more interested in running over to the games themselves.
Because of this, I feel as though I should have tried to make my resources/work more appealing to children (although I did try to do this originally by reducing the text that I was showing). This could have possibly been done by using more colours on my resources and maybe even using more of a unique and appealing text font (and colour).
Another piece of work that was missed by many was my script. There were a few people who picked up my script on their own accord, and others who picked it up and flicked through it as I was talking to them, but for the most part, many still didn't really take much notice too it. Now this could be due to a variety of reasons, but I feel like some of the main reasons could be due to the length of my script, and lack of appeal (in terms of visuals).
As I wrote a full script, as opposed to the script for a single level or two, there was around 47 double-sided pages that made up my script (94 pages single sided), which made it kind of obvious that no one was going to read it in their entirety (as it would take an hour or two). I feel like I could have improved this by taking out either act one, two, or three and just showing that as my script for the exhibition.
This would have meant that the script would have been shorter, meaning that the visitors might have been more interested in reading the script, as it would have been around a third of the content/text. For this idea, showing the first act would have been a good idea, as act 1 establishes most of the story, such as the game/story objective (although there are areas which are not introduced until act 2 and 3, such as the antagonist. But for the exhibition, I ended up showing my whole script, but that was due to my own decision as I wanted to show off my whole script, as that was the tasks I spent the most time on, and was most likely the most professional piece of work I carried throughout the project.
The other possible improvement would have been to show the script in a different, appealing format. This was an idea I had before the exhibition, but I decided against it as I wanted to show the script in a format which reflected an actual script as closely as possible, as I felt the traditional script-like style would be an appealing feature in itself.
One of the final improvements that I noticed were errors within the script. Now I knew the script wasn't perfect, as after completing it I lacked the time to read through the whole script, and so I knew there would be a number of problems/errors.
But if I did have more time, I would have liked to make these improvements, and got my script to a point where everything (spelling/grammar) was flawless and as professional as possible.
Another two areas that I feel could have been improved were my story process timeline and my character biographies. In terms of what they showed, I feel as though they were fine, but upon arriving at First Site to set up, I realised that the text on the documents wasn't exactly the most easily readable size.
Although you could still read the text when the documents were stuck/pinned to the wall, it wasn't exactly the easiest to read. I should have made the character biographies much larger, as the sections of text were rather small (as I wanted the bios to make use of less text to be more appealing). This would have made them more easy to read, and therefore maybe even more appealing (if I also changed the font/colour along with the size).
Moving on to the exhibition as a whole, there were some areas that I noticed could have been done better.
One of these areas was the sound department. During the two days at the exhibition, I noticed that the sound designers activity (which I believe was meant to be a sound workshop) wasn't being used, but was just sitting on the side. If this activity was actually being used, I feel as though it could be been a fun little activity for the kids who were visiting, and waiting to play the games.
Another area that I feel could have been better linked to sound once again. From looking at the survey results, I've been able to see that a large portion of the respondents couldn't actually hear the music/sound playing through the speakers.
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Analyse and discuss the survey results
Over the course of the exhibition, surveys regarding the exhibition and the different departments were handed out to the visitors to be filled out for feedback.
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The surveys themselves had a few questions relevant to each department, meaning everyone would have some sort of relevant feedback to them and their individual role.
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Below the blank survey is linked, which shows all of the questions that the survey included (these questions were decided by the students involved in the project).
Survey Questions
Once the exhibition was over, were were all given access to the survey results. This came in the form of a PDF file with around 39 completed (or somewhat completed) surveys.
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I began to read through these surveys to analyse the results, but quickly found that it was rather difficult to cycle through 39 responses over and over again, and so I decided that before analysing the results, I would create my own spreadsheet to show the results.
Survey Results
The very first question of the survey asked: "How did you find out about the exhibition?".
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From the results of the survey, you can see that 28 out of the 39 (around 71%) of the respondents states that they heard about the exhibition from 'word of mouth'. This was the most common answer by far, followed by 'Visit Colchester Website' which was answered four times.
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Some other answers were also answered, but they were a lot less common. 'Leaflet' was answered a total of 3 times, and then 'social media' and 'First Site Website' was answered 1 time.
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In addition to this, there were also 3 respondents who didn't answer the question, which could imply none of the options was how they found out about the event, and they just found it on the day (much like respondent 23).
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Becasue of this, you can tell what areas of advertising were strong and which were weak. One option, being 'Game websites' received zero votes, meaning this was likely an area for all groups that weren't carried out too effectively and could have been improved and then shown/linked to the public more.
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The second question of the survey asked: "What did you expect the exhibition to be like before you arrived?"
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From the responses, you can see that a number of people didn't really have a perfect understanding/image of what the exhibition would show, such as respondents 2, 3, 17, 21 who thought it was all going to be a lot more formal than it actually was.
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However, there were still many that had a pretty close image to what the exhibition ended up being, which mainly came in the form of answers like respondent 13 who stated: "See games and how they were made".
This was similar to other responses from respondents 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 15, 18, 34, 36, and 38.
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So from this question, we have been able to see that many people knew what our exhibition was going to be about, which
would mean that the marketing teams were successful in advertising the event for what it actually was.
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The third question of the survey asked "Did the exhibition meet your expectations? Why/ why not?"
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From the responses to this question, 26 of the respondents stated that the exhibition did meet their expectations, and 8 stated that it didn't meet their expectations.
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However, out of the 8 that stated that it didn't meet their expectations, 6 of the responses (respondents 1,2, 17, 31, 32, and 39) were rather positive, saying how the exhibition exceeded their expectations, or that the exhibition itself was different from what they thought (but in a good way).
Although the other 2 responses were more negative, saying "Quieter and more discreet than expected" (which may not necessarily be bad), and "There weren't that many games".
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After having looked through all of the shown responses, I feel as two out of 39 (somewhat) negative responses aren't too bad, especially as they were areas that we couldn't change/had no word in (where the exhibition was, and how many games we made).
In addition to this, as stated, a number of people stated that the exhibition itself surpassed their expectations (respondents 1, 17, 31, and 32) which to me, further implies that the exhibition was successful.
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The fourth question of the survey asked "Do the logos reflect the sci-fi pirate theme of the game? Why/ why not?"
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From the results obtained from the survey, I can tell that the majority of the exhibition viewers felt that the game logos did reflect the sci-fi pirate theme.
Out of the 39 respondents, 27 (69%) said 'yes' (or something implying yes), 6 (15%) stated 'no', and another six didn't answer. However, although people stayed yes, there was a number which also stated that the pirate theme was the only theme they portrayed, but not sci-fi. Examples of this can be seen from respondents 1, 10, 13, 18, 35, 37. Although the majority still stated yes, I feel that enough people have said that they don't reflect sci-fi enough, meaning if this project was to continue, the logos should be redeveloped to suit the theme of the game (the sci-fi aspect) more.
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The fifth question of the survey asked: "Which of the characters appeal to you the most and why?"
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Question 5 was one of the questions which was relevant to my role in the project as the writer.
From the results, I was able to see what characters were appealing to my audience/the exhibition viewers.
The most frequent answer in terms of the most appealing character was undoubtedly the character named Rio (Treasure of the Seven Skies), with a total of 10 responses (at least). From what I saw at the exhibition, this character had professional level digital concept art and a high-quality model within the game. However I didn't get to read about the character myself, so I can only really go from what I can see in the responses.
From the responses which directly say that Rio is the most appealing character, the responses are as follows:
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Respondent 10 - "Because of the art and he's cool"
Respondent 11 - "Because he's a pirate" Respondent 14 - "He's cute" Respondent 24- "Unique" Respondent 25 - "Very suitable for the theme" Respondent 31 - "Amazing quality" Respondent 39 - "Cute pirate"
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From this, we can see that the appeal is due to a number of reasons. However, the two most common answers are "he's cute" and "because he's a pirate", with each receiving two votes (I'm counting the latter as two as respondent 25 stated "very suitable for the theme", which was pirates).
So to put it simply, it could be said that this characters appeal is due to its cuteness and comparability to a pirate.
Moving on, the second most answered character was Carrot Cake (Carrot Cake and Cutlass), which received 4 responses.
The responses that elaborated/explained why are shown below:
Respondent 1 - "looks cute"
Respondent 17 - "very relatable"
Respondent 21 - "was very original"
From the responses, you can see that the answers vary. That answers mention the cuteness of the character (response 1), but also the originality of the design/character (response 21).
The other response (response 17) stated that the character was "very relatable", but this doesn't explain much (possibly a link to the writing of the character?) Two of my own characters can also be seen on the responses. The protagonist of my group's game, Ace, and Rosa (who would have been an NPC character if she was in the game), both received 2 responses (each).
The responses for Ace are shown below:
Respondent 13 - "more sci-fi and looks cool"
Respondent 15 - "design was interesting"
From these responses, I can tell that my protagonist was appealing to some of my audience due to the unique/different design, and the cool sci-fi look (likely the mechanic prosthetic arm). From this I can tell that including mechanical prosthetics in my character concepts was a good idea, as it was able to help portray the sci-fi theme, which other game characters failed to portray.
Another character from my game who also received two response was an NPC character, Rosa. The two responses that she obtained were:
Respondent 26 - "Character reminds me of my granddaughter"
Respondent 27 - "Appears ready for action"
From response 26, I can tell how it was one of the adults who liked the character (which isn't my audience but isn't necessarily bad). Then there's response 27, which is probably referring to the character's personality.
From these responses (from both of my characters), I have been able to see that my audience like my characters due to the 'cool' and unique designs, and due to the different but unique personalities.
One of the other games, being Alvaro, also got a response ragarding their appealing characters.
Response 37 - "Alvaro characters- look good and have personality"
From this response, I can see that the audience not only care about the visuals of the characters but also that they have a personality. Linking back to my characters, due to this response, I feel as though my characters would also be appealing as they also have different/unique personalities.
From the results of this question, I can tell that the popular characters were all those which were cute, cool looking, or had unique and interesting designs. Because of this, I feel as though my characters were somewhat effective (as there were those who stated that they were appealing), but I feel as though they could have been more appealing.
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The sixth question of the survey asked: "What do you like/dislike about the stories of the games?"
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The results for this question varied significantly as the question in itself was rather open.
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As soon as I looked at the results for this question, I could already see a problem, which was many people failed to understand/answer the question correctly, and instead of said something about the Stories, stated something the liked about the game (e.g responses 3, some of 4, 23, 27, 28, and 39)
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However, there were some relevant responses, such as the following examples:
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Respondent 2 - "Side quest/easter egg"
Respondent 10 - "I like the fact that there's loads of backstory"
Respondent 17 - "I liked the simplistic story"
Respondent 20 - "Stories are interesting and engaging"
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From the responses, I have been able to notice a range of areas that the exhibition viewers liked about the different stories and games.
One of these areas is character/word backstory, and side story. From the responses, respondents 2 and 4 liked the stories due to the inclusion of side quests. Linking this to my group's game, this is something we didn't manage to implement, but we had hoped to. And due to these responses, we can know that this would have been a good area to include in the games.
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Response 10 mentioned how they liked the backstory. This means that each and every game should have been effective in somewhat, as a task for the writers was to write the backstory, whether being world lore, or actual character backstories. However, in terms of our game, we didn't manage to implement the actual story, so for my group, this would have been missed.
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There are also some responses that mention some problems. These are as follows:
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Response 9 - "No story in games"
Response 13 - "Wasn't much story I could find"
Response 15 - "Hard to follow"
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From the three responses above, it is apparent that some visitors to the exhibition had some trouble understanding the games.
For my groups game, we didn't manage to implement our actual story (as well as cutscenes). So for our game demo at the exhibition, there wasn't a story. However, it's not like there wasn't a story, as planning the story and writing the script were both pretty big tasks for me during the project.
During the time I was standing around the games, I was able to explain that our story wasn't in our game, which then allowed me to explain the general outline of the story. However, at times I wasn't there to explain, there may have been times that the viewers/players just thought the game had no story.
However, I think this was the case for most games, as from what I saw, some of the other games only portrayed the world, or the world along with an objective,
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This is something that probably should have been made more clear to the visitors, but I feel as though it wasn't too big of a problems, as when they walked around to each group's stands, they would have looked at the printed resources, and most likely spoke to a group member about their games story.
The seventh question of the survey asked: "How engaging was the music of the game?"
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From the results of this question, you can see that the majority of the answers were 'quite engaging', with a total of 25 responses.
The next most responded answer was 'very engaging' with a total of 6 responses. Closely followed by 'not very engaging' with a total of 2 responses.
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From these results, it could be said that the sounds within the game(s) were effective, as the majority, 79%, of all respondents stated that the sounds of the games were engaging (quite engaging and very engaging)
The eighth question of the survey asked: "How well does the music suit the sci-fi pirate theme of the game?"
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From the responses shown, it is evident that the most common answer to this question was 'quite well suited'.
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The answer with the most responses was, in fact, 'quite well suited' with a total of 23 responses. This was followed by 'very well suited' which had a total of 8 responses, and then 'not suited at all', with 3 responses.
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So in total, 31 responses (79% of all responses) stated that the music/sounds were suited to the sci-fi pirate theme, and becasue of this, it could be said that the sounds were in fact fitting to the theme.
The ninth question of the survey asked: "How do the sound effects affect your experience when playing the games?"
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As this question was another open question, all of the results vary from one another, and so I will be covering some of the main points.
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Respondent 4 - "I find sound in games distracting. Jump noise would get annoying after a while"
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Respondent 13 - "makes you more immersed in the game" (similar to respondent 15 and 32)
Respondent 17 - "They make it more alive"
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From these responses (and the others shown in the image), there was a mix of feelings about music within games.
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Respondents, such as 14, stated that they find the sound effects distracting, and even
went on to say that the jump sound effects of the game would likely get annoying after some time of playing. I feel as though this is actually common in many games though, as many have a sound effect that plays when a particular action is carried out (such as jumping, attacking, or dying). However, to prevent it from getting annoying really quick, it could be possible to make use of multiple different sounds for the actions.
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Other responses were more on the positive side, such as responses 13, 15 and 32 and 17.
Response 17 talks about how the sounds make the game feel more alive, which is what you would want from them, as with the use of sounds, even an imaginative fantasy world can seem believable through similar sounds (to real life - such as people talking, or soundscapes of trees rustling and the wind blowing, etc.).
From looking at the results, there are a lot more positive responses regarding sound effects, than negative results, which leads me to believe that the audiences general opinion on them is that they're good and a vital area of games, but also that our games were also effective in using sound effects.
The tenth question of the survey asked: "How appealing was the art style in the games and why?"
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From the results of question 10, we can see how appealing the art styles of the games were.
There is one big problem, however, which is most of the games have different art styles, but the question doesn't ask the respondent to specify what game they're talking about, meaning the answers are rather hard to link to my own group's work, so I'll just have to talk about the styles collectively.
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From the results shown in the image, you can see that all of the answers (so not including n/a) either stated 'very appealing' or 'quite appealing', which makes me believe that the art styles of all of the games were effective, successful, and appealing, as there were not 'not very appealing' responses.
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To go into a bit more detail, 'very appealing' received a total of 22 responses (56% of all responses), and then 'quite appealing' received 14
responses (being 35% of all), meaning that a collective 91% of the respondents said that the art was appealing, with the other 9% being respondents who didn't answer, which furthers my opinion of the art styles of the game being effective and appealing for the audience.
The eleventh question of the survey asked: "How well was the sci-fi pirate theme shown through the art work in the game and exhibition?"
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As question 11 was a closed question, the answers are easier to look at and quantify.
From looking at the results shown in the image/spreadsheet, you can see that the most common answers are 'quite well' and 'very well'.
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The number of people who responded with 'quite well' was 14 (35%), and then the number of people who responded 'very well' was 16 (41%). This means that a collective 30 respondents (76%) felt that the pirate theme was shown through the artwork well.
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However, there were a number of people who answered 'theme was not apparent'.
There were four respondents who answered with this, meaning that they felt the theme wasn't distinguishable through the art.
Although becasue this question isn't open, I'm not sure why they think this. But if I had to guess, it would be becasue the sci-fi theme wasn't constantly apparent enough (linking to my group, the only
sci-fi elements shown were the mechanical prosthetics and mechanical enemies, although the enemies looked like normal crabs).
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Becasue of this, we should have tried to make the sci-fi theme more apparent through the artwork of the game, and then for my group specifically, we should have displayed the concept art for the mechanical enemies, as I feel they would have been effective at portraying the sci-fi theme (as they're robots, which is a common trait of sci-fi media).
The twelfth question of the survey asked: "Did you enjoy playing the games?"
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Question 12 was a rather simple question but would provide very useful results.
From looking at the results of this question, it is evident that the majority enjoyed playing the game.
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To go into more detail, 27 (69%) of the respondents stated 'yes', meaning that they enjoyed playing the games.
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Thankfully, there wasn't a single respondent that stated that they did not enjoy playing the game, but there were some who replied 'to some extent'. In total 3 people (7.6%) responded with 'to some extent'. This still meant that they enjoyed the games though, but means they could have enjoyed them more.
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Although respondents 19 and 29 gave reasons for their answers (being 'to some extent').
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Respondent 19 stated that "You get to know the characters but the story is a bit stale".
The problem with this is that they didn't state what game they were talking about, meaning data like this isn't too helpful. However, I feel as though this problem could have been resolved if we managed to fit the stories into the games, as I know the two groups in my class (B1/B2) didn't manage to do this.
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Respondent 29 stated "wasn't my type of game".
So this means that they didn't necessarily dislike the game, but they would have prefered a different type of genre. However, I don't feel as though this is too big of a problem, as the majority of the audience found the games appealing.
The thirteenth question of the survey asked "How easy was it to understand the controls?"
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Question 13 was a question from the level designers to see how well the controls they had used for the games were.
From what I saw, pretty much all of the games used the general controls of WASD/the arrow keys to move, the space bar to jump, and then the mouse to move the camera.
However, for my group's game, there was a number of other controls, as our lead level designer managed to add a number of features to our game. However, he managed to avoid the problem of the controls being difficult by having a control section on the hud which could be toggled on/off at the player's will.
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From the results, it is evident that everyone who answered found the controls easy to use (quite and very easy).
7 (17 %) respondents stated that the controls were 'quite easy' and then 25 (64%) stated that the controls were 'very easy'. However, as the remaining responses were either 'looked very easy' or unanswered questions, out of all of the answers, 100% of the respondents stated that the controls were easy. Becasue of this, I feel as though the games were suitable for the target audience, as they managed to play the games and understand the controls.
The fourteenth question of the survey asked: "How clear was the objective of the game?"
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From the results, you can see that most of the audience understood the objective of the games.
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There was 17 respondents (43%) stated that the objective of the games was 'quite clear', and then 12 (30%) respondents stated that the objectives were 'very clear', meaning that a total of 29 respondents (73%) found the objectives clear.
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However, there were those who didn't understand the objectives of the games, which is shown by the 4 respondents (10%) who answered 'not clear at all'.
Although I think there may be a reason for this. While I was helping out in the room with the game on the pcs, and talking with the viewers, there were a number of people who couldn't understand the objective of the games. One game didn't have an objective, which confused some people, but there were those who were still getting confused with the games which had objectives.
My groups game, in particular, had objectives. These objectives were explained through text on the screen.
But there were still those who didn't understand. Becasue of this, It might have been a good idea for a button to bring up a quest/objective tab to allow the players to be reminded of the game's objective.
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However, as I stated, the majority of my audience understood the game's objective clearly, which makes me believe that they were effective and appealing.
The fifteenth question of the survey asked: "Did you find any bugs or glitches in the games? Please tell us about them!"
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The final question asked the audience whether they had encountered any bugs/glitches while playing/watching the games.
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To this, 19 (48%) respondents answered 'no', 13 (33%) people didn't answer, which likely means no.
However, the remaining respondents answered with bugs and glitches that they had found.
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Two of the responses (at least) were specific to my groups game, being responses 10 and 11.
Both of these responses talked about a similar problem, which was phasing through walls when
Clicking. Now our level designers know of some of the problems, but there;'s not really a reason at the current time for this to be fixed (as it's the end of the project and everyone will be doing their evaluations), but from showing the game at the exhibition and having testing done on the game, we were able to pinpoint some problems.
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However, the majority of respondents (81%) didn't find any glitches, so I feel as though the game was quite successful, and the teams who were involved in putting the game together (mainly level design), did an outstanding job.
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Survey Improvements
While analysing the survey results, I found a number of questions that gave me some difficulty, in terms of analysing the questions.
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I realised that all the questions had the same problem, but also that there was an easy fix to this problem. I feel as though the respondents should have had to state what game or games they were talking about at the beginning of the survey, or during the questions. I feel like this would have been a good improvement, as half of the questions provided me with feedback that was relevant to a specific game, without saying what game/group they were talking about. However, if this improvement was to have been used, it would have instructed the respondents to state which area/game they were talking about/leaving feedback for, which would then provide relevant and more accurate data (as anyone analysing could tell what game or group they're talking about).
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One of the other main improvements that should have been made would be a question asking for the respondent's age. This would have been useful as it would have allowed me to see what responses were from what age group, as this could allow me to see the relevant responses for my target audience, but also how they vary from respondents from different age groups.
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Was the final product suitable and appealing to your target audience
With my knowledge and understanding of how the exhibition went, along with the feedback from the analysed exhibition surveys, I would say that the exhibition and the different components that made up the exhibition (so my work, my group's work/game, and every other group's work/games) were all effective and successful in being appealing to the target audience in some way, sharp, or form.
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To begin with I could tell that the exhibition was appealing to the target audience, as during both of the days that the exhibition was open to the public, I was there helping. Because of this, I was able to see a number of people (children) who were likely the age of the projects target audience, or at least close to it, playing and enjoying the games. Not only this, but they were keen to play all of the games, and do all that there was to do (complete each of them, if there was an objective).
Due to this reason, I feel as though saying that the games and work was appealing, but just by saying that this happened doesn't provide any solid evidence. However, that is why the survey feedback is helpful.
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Now, as I have already analysed the survey above this section, I won't go through every question, and the questions I do go through won't be in too much detail. But I will briefly go over some of the key questions which have helped demonstrate the effectiveness of the exhibition.
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In terms of the games, I feel as though every group can feel as though they were successful in appealing to their audience, as all of the respondents to question 12 (which asked 'Did you enjoy playing the games?'), answered 'yes' or 'to some extent'. If the games weren't appealing, I feel as though there would have been answers stating 'no', but then there would also need there to be a fair few for it to be a result to make me think otherwise.
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Furthermore, linking to my own work, the feedback has also allowed me to see that my own work was, in fact, appealing (at least somewhat) to the target audience. Question 5 asked the audience 'Which of the characters appeal to you the most and why?', and to this, two of my characters were stated two times each. Now, this isn't overly amazing, but there were many other appealing characters at the exhibition, and the question asked them to pick out one. So for me, this is a success. Two people stated that the protagonist of my game was their favourite character, and then another two stated that one of my NPC characters (which wasn't in the game but was shown with artwork and my biography) was their favourite characters.
The examples of these responses are as follows:
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Respondent 13 - "Mechanical arm dude - more sci-fi and looks cool"
Respondent 15 - "The one with the mechanical arm - design was interesting"
Respondent 26 - "Appears to be ready for action"
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But along with the other questions that I previously went through, I would say that my work as an individual, but also the exhibition as a whole/collective, was successful and appealing to our audience, but also expanded and appealed to older and younger audiences as well (as families of all ages were visiting and interacting with the games, activities, and students).
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How was your team's work received by the audience/general public
​I feel as though this was generally explained during the previous section(s), but I'll run over some of the key areas once more just to make sure.
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I would say that my group's work was received rather well by the audience during the exhibition. Although there are a number of areas in which I believe could have been improved, making the more appealing. Some of these improvements are to my own work, and some are to the work of others in my group.
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In terms of my personal work, I feel as though I could have made my exhibition resources more appealing my making a number of changes to them.
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One resource I had shown off at the exhibition was a timeline of my story development progress. This was stuck to the wall behind my group's table. However, I feel as though I should have either printed the slides on larger pieces of paper, made the text bigger, or presented the piece of work in a different way, as the resource wasn't that easy to read.
This was a similar problem that my character biographies had. I feel as though I should have increased the size of the text to make the writing more appealing, and more readable.
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The other resource I felt could have been improved was my script. For this, I'm not talking about improvements to the spelling and grammar (although there were a number of these mistakes where I lacked the time to read through/improve), but more of a problem of presenting.
I feel as though becasue I had a 94-page script, people didn't really feel inclined to read it which meant that they didn't get a taste of my story.
To make this more appealing, I should have selected one of the three acts from the script (likely act 1), and printed/shown that single section. This could have been a good move, as there would be less in total for the viewer to read, meaning they might be more likely to read it.
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Moving on, in terms of the work of the rest of my group, I feel as though it would have been effective and more appealing to the audience if the artwork for the characters were digitalised (as it would make them look more professional and completed), as well as showing our antagonist and enemies (concept art for them), as well as showing print outs of our levels. I saw some other groups do this, and in my opinion, it definitely made their stands look a lot more appealing, and helped draw people in to take a look (something that I felt our stand somewhat struggled to do without the help of students talking to the visitors).
I feel as though having these additional printouts from the group's different departments would have definitely improved our groups stand and appealed to more people, as for one, more areas of our game would have been shown, and explained visually, as opposed to a piece of my work just giving a verbal explanation (with the visual image being more appealing, as for most an image/colour is more appealing than a block of text).
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However, although I've just quickly mentioned a number of improvements that could have been made, I do still feel as though a lot of my group's work went well and managed to be appealing to the audience.
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Linking back to the survey, there were questions for each department that prove that their work was successful in being appealing to the audience.
The main question that I feel shows that my group's work was appealing was question 12 which asked: "Did you enjoy playing the games?".
This question received a 100% positive result (out of those who actually answered). And this means that everyone in my group carried out work that ended up being somewhat appealing to the audience, as each and everyone in the group had something to do with the game (well, maybe not marketing, but their work was advertising, and people came to the event so and played the game, so I'd still say their work was appealing) ,whether that was my concept for the game itself and the characters, the models from the art team, the mechanics and world from the level design team, the SFX from the sound team.
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As the game was the main part of the exhibition, and the main goal of the group, I feel as if my group, and all its members, have been successful in making a product that appeals its target audience (and would also say it appeals to an audience that consists of more than just the audience).
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Identify the key feedback you were given
As I have probably gone over the key feedback a number of times by this point, I'm going to cover what I believe to be the main points/feedback from the exhibition surveys with the use of a list followed by an explanation.
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Question 4 - "Do the logos reflect the sci-fi pirate theme?"
To this, we found that the majority of respondents (69%) stated that the logos of the games did suit the sci-fi pirates theme. However, 6 respondents (15%) stated that they didn't think the logos reflected the theme. In my honest opinion, regarding our own logo, I feel as though it only just about portrays the pirate theme, but struggles to reflect the sci-fi theme. Originally, the idea was for the boat on the logo to be drawn by a member of the art team to show a mechanical/steampunk style boat, but this was never carried out. However, I feel as though if this improvement was to be made, the logo would reflect both themes more effectively.
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Question 5 - "Which of the characters appeal to you the most and why?"
From the feedback for this question, I was able to find that a few of my characters were successful in being appealing to my audience (even being their favourites of the exhibition).
My main character, Ace, was said to be the most appealing character to two of the respondents. the reasons for the character being liked were "more sci-fi and looks cool" and "design was interesting".
From this, I was able to tell that my decision to make use of mechanical limbs for many characters throughout the world would have been a good idea to stick with (if the full game was to be created), as the unique and different design would have been appealing to my audience (or at least a part of my audience). ​
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Question 10 - "How appealing was the art style of the game and why?"
The art styles of the different games were all effective and appealing to the audience, as all who responded stated that the style was either 'quite appealing' or 'very appealing' (100% of respondents). Throughout the development of the assets for the game, I know certain members of the art team struggled (especially while modelling), but seeing this shows that their hard work paid off in the end/during the exhibition.
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Question 12 - "Did you enjoy playing the games?"
Once again, all of the respondents who answered this question either answered 'yes' or 'to some extent', which makes me believe that the games were appealing to the audience, which is the main thing I think anyone could have hoped for during this project (as the project was to develop a game suitable to a relevant audience, and from the feedback, we have all definitely completed this task).
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Discuss any interaction you had with the public regarding your work
As I attended the exhibition both of the days it was open to the public, there was a number of times that I interacted with the visitors.
The majority of the time I was helping children (and even some adults) understand the game's controls and objectives, as many were unaware of the controls or what they were meant to be doing, as many had never played a game using a keyboard before, and then also as some games (such as my own groups) had a few more controls than basic movement.
This wasn't directly my work, but I was allowed to help the visitors play my group's game which allowed me to get a general idea about their opinions on the game (whether they enjoyed it or not), and also gave me an opportunity to talk to some of the parents about the project, and about my own groups game.
During these conversations, I often tried to explain the project from start to finish, explaining how the different roles worked within the project and then explaining what I did, and what my team role was.
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The other times I interacted with others (well, the other notable times), were when the first years of the IMG course came to the exhibition to help gain a better understanding of what they'd be doing in their next year.
During this time I talked to a number of students and tried to explain this project to them as best as possible. During this time I explained how the 2nd project of the year leads up to the final project and prepares them by helping develop the skills for the roles they want to carry out, and then I explained the process of most of the roles, and the work that's designated to each.
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I found that many of the students were just like me when I started the 2nd year of this course, as they weren't sure as to what role they would aim for in the extended project (FMP). As I had been in their position, I told them not to worry, and also further explained that the 2nd project of the year (futureproof), telling them that it's a project that will help them decide on the roles they'd wish to go for, due to the workshops that are carried out during the time of the project.
But I also told them that I was the same and that I had no clue, so they shouldn't worry about it as they have almost a year to decide.
Hopefully, my talks with the students gave them an insight into the whole of the second year (and not just this project), but I'm also hoping that by talking to me and by seeing the exhibition, they will have a reasonable idea of what will need to be done when their turn arrives to create their games and hold the exhibition.
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