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What Went Right
1. Design block; creating the blueprint. The design block proved to be an efficient and highly enjoyable part of the process. What started as ideas on Post-It notes quickly segued into rough storyboards and a game matrix. The matrix allowed us to view all the activities and puzzles together and make sure we had a balance (early mathematics, spatial relations, listening skills, and so on). We used a flowchart to map the navigation paths and number of screens. This was a good way to lay out our narrative, with the linear opening and closing sequences bookending our nonlinear core section. As art director and producer, I was often arguing with myself over more screens versus not enough time, but at a total of 88 screens, the game had a lot of variety and depth.
As we finalized our ideas, the lead programmer created crude prototypes which we tested on kids. It was incredible how little information kids needed to "get" the activity. It gave us a lot of confidence in the activities that worked, and glaringly showed us the ones that didn't. Doing early prototypes was probably the smartest thing we did in regards to design. At the end of design block we had a comprehensive design document that contained the game narrative, character and landscape descriptions, style guide, technical specifications, activities and puzzles (including educational objectives and levels), storyboards, flowchart, activity matrix, and a map of Oz. The design document proved to be an excellent tool for the entire team and was also useful in securing our distributor's confidence. 2. Communication, or how we managed to overcome 10,000 miles. As the enormity of the task at hand dawned on us, communication took on even more importance. I needed to make sure DK knew exactly where we were at, that reviews and sign-offs happened on time, and that any changes were incorporated back into the schedule. The extranet and daily e-mails made communication with DK easy and relatively stress-free. They had nominated one of their producers as our point person, and as we needed sign-off from both the U.S. and the U.K., it was much more efficient to deal with one person. The producer and I spoke on the phone every couple of weeks and he came out for a week in November. I went to London in February and it certainly helped meeting face to face. While the time difference was sometimes a frustration, in general the distance wasn't an issue, and the experience was a professional, highly satisfying partnership. Communication also ran exceptionally well within the production team. We had weekly production meetings which ran from 15 minutes to two hours, depending on the needs of the production. Sometimes it felt like we didn't have enough time, but it was still important to get together in a room, even if it was just to talk about the weekend or discuss our personal frustrations. In addition, we set milestone goals that were celebrated by lunches out together. Again, it was tempting to keep working when we were in crunch mode, but the morale boost was well worth the time away from the project. 3. Usability testing; trusting the kids. We started usability testing with kids right from the beginning. Programmer art prototypes were shown to various children from the target age range, and we had a mix of boys and girls with different degrees of computer literacy. One of the joys of working with children is their absolute candor. They made it very clear when something was boring or "lame," and could quite eloquently explain why they liked some activities better than others. We were often surprised by the results, but knew that we had to trust them. One of the most interesting experiences lay with our Itchy Bug activity. This game involves spotting the difference between fruits on a tree. Four of the fruits are identical, but one is actually an itchy bug. Children must look closely at the lines and dots on the fruit to determine which one is different. When we tested this game, children liked it but found it too easy. However, adults found it quite difficult. We tested various iterations, and ended up going with a version that, at the hard level, had only a one-pixel difference between fruits. Children loved it and found it challenging, but when we bug-tested the product we were told there was a problem, as all the fruits were identical. In fact they weren't, it was just that the adult tester couldn't spot the difference.
We continued usability testing throughout production. One of the smarter things we did was to write down the audio prompts that worked best, and in later reviews, to test out the prompts we planned to record. This saved us a lot of unnecessary rerecording and gave us the confidence that the prompts were the right ones. During each usability test we would take notes which would be compiled into a report. We would suggest actions based on what we saw, and the executive producer would decide on which actions to take. Every single usability test raised new issues and illuminated problems. This is one area we got right and our feeling is that one cannot test too much. 4. Knowing our weaknesses and using consultants. In addition to our usability tests, we used educational consultants on both the game and the interactive storybook. While we liked to think we had a certain degree of expertise based on our previous experience, there was still a lot to learn. Hiring experts was definitely one of the smartest things we did. Early on we brought on a children's television producer and adviser on our Bananas titles. He helped us a lot in understanding how children of our target age think and see. For example, we had planned on a camera angle that was almost a top-down view of the forest. He pointed out that children of this age have no understanding of extreme perspectives. They wouldn't understand that they were looking at the top of trees, but instead would see them as dark green clouds on a light green background. Likewise, he caught a number of potential problems with the activity audio prompts. I had thought it would add variety to ask the same question in different ways. For example, in the Whirly Flowers activity, the child must learn the rules of which flower can grow next to another. We told the child, "Red flowers only like being next to blue flowers," and then, "Red flowers don't like yellow or white flowers." It was the same piece of information but having two prompts totally confused the kids.
Our scriptwriter had also had a lot of experience writing children's content for games and television. He was able to solve many of our logic problems within the narrative and was able to find humorous solutions for linking the activities to the central quest. For example, in the Water Pipes activity, he drew on the Wicked Witch's fear of water to set up the mixed-up water pipes. The result was twofold: it gave a reason for the game and also hinted at how the child could defeat the witch. In this case, his experience with children's television drama crossed over and enriched the game. 5. Localization: avoiding the nightmare it could have been. Having been through the arduous process of localization on our other titles, we were determined to be on top of localization from the beginning. Our experience on Bananas (distributed in 18 countries) combined with Dorling Kindersley's expertise meant we were off to a pretty good start. First, we designed our characters to have what we called "Muppet mouth." Because one animation had to fit multiple soundtracks, and once localized had to fit another language, we didn't want to create real lip-synch. The advantages were many -- modeling was simpler, animation was faster, and at CD-ROM resolution and movie size, it didn't look too bad. We also wrote the script with localization in mind. Dialogue was always overwritten so that when translated into a longer language such as German, the dialogue could be cut down and still match the length of the animation. We also had to pay attention to fonts and live text within the game. We wanted the child's name to appear at various places in the game, including on the back of the boat in the lake scene and on the Order of Oz certificate. We needed to design the live text areas with flat perspective and build in enough space for long names. Likewise, we needed to provide layered artwork with all embedded text on a separate layer. Overall, we built the title with as many externally linked media files as possible. Because we had planned localization from the start of production we were able to deliver the localization kit soon after the delivery of gold master. This made our distributor very happy, and ensured that foreign publishers made their Christmas deadline. ________________________________________________________ |
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Features
