Post Mortem - Perth Games Festival (PGF)

What went right?

• Overall, it was a very enjoyable experience for everyone. We were able to get the game to a standard that was playable and that was presentable as almost a “beta” form of the game. It functioned properly and we didn’t experience any crashes, and any bugs that were found we were mostly already aware of.
• Despite some textures not being entirely complete, or requiring a few revisions, we were very happy with the overall feedback of the game. Most results from the observations and survey results said that the variation in pixelation densities were barely noticeable, and the majority of our new players were very pleased with how the game ran and enjoyed themselves.
• The day ran very smoothly, and despite being tucked into a smaller corner of the room, we were given plenty of room for people to play the game. We even had a kid who was barely 10 play the game, and watching him have fun was a very satisfying and rewarding feeling. We were also all able to wander around and enjoy the event for ourselves at some point, which was a good break from staring at our own work constantly.
• “Overall, we were most satisfied with the fact that everyone that played had fun and the game played well. Plus, there were no injuries” - Kris (Art & Design Leads)

What went wrong?

• As mentioned, whilst we were aware of some bugs, fresh eyes will pick up something that we might not have seen. A few bugs were found, and there was also still some feedback that pointed out aesthetic flaws (pixel densities being inconsistent, etc) and some people mentioned verbally that they’d like a punching feature. Granted, this was because we couldn’t implement everything we wanted into the game, and what we did have ready wasn’t entirely to our standards. “Enemies were kinda flaky when it came to attacking players and didn’t always provide a challenge. There were some behavioural issues or even path problems where they would just walk into objects. They had a hard time detecting a very tall person who played our game, too” - Kris (Art & Design Leads)
• There was a relatively noticeable lack of marketing for our stand, and whilst not everyone had business cards or flyers, most other participants had some sort of unique interest that attracted people to their playtesting tables. Admittedly though, we were also in a slightly less accessible location and struggled to be seen past other players/teams sometimes.
• “The initial setup was problematic due to the uni headsets not working, but luckily Deklan was smart enough to bring his back up which worked out. It just meant stress early on in the day which wasn’t necessary” - Kris (Art & Design Leads)
• “I noticed that what was thought to be a simple intuitive control scheme confused players who were new to VR, and even some regular VR players were confused at first too. Some players didn’t seem to want to reach down further than their waist to pick up items as well, which was something I had to remind people of a lot” - Deklan (Tech Lead)

What would you do differently?

• Marketing would be done a lot better, and we would’ve had a better set-up overall. “If I could have foreseen how many people were around, I would’ve made a plan and created handouts so that we could engage with more people. On a few occasions, we didn’t initiate conversations with people who were browsing or looked over our station for a bit, so they left without a word or even attempting to join in or play” - Tahlia (Producer + Marketing Lead). “In hindsight, we probably should’ve had pamphlets with information regarding the team and the game to give more information and reduce the need to talk about everything, especially when busy. A lot of people seemed to just skim over the instructions and didn’t really understand it all, so we had to step in a fair bit” - Kris (Art & Design Leads)
• It would’ve been better to not print too much survey material, as the bulk of it was done on a laptop. “I printed 100 pages, but we definitely didn’t need that much - especially when a lot of the more important results from our survey were done on my laptop” - Jackson (Testing Lead). “I noticed that the observation sheets also could’ve been significantly more condensed so that we didn’t need one page per player, but being thorough definitely doesn’t hurt I suppose. I think the results could’ve been found in a much more efficient way though” - Tahlia (Producer + Marketing Lead). “On top of that, we should’ve ensured that the laptop with the Google survey was accessible” - Kris (Art & Design Leads)