We closed Phase Three with a presentation, which our team decided to manage by allocating a small amount of time for the Octopus Librarian and Co-operative game ideas, and dedicating the rest of our 12 minute presentation to Upside Island. We did this as we knew that Upside Island was the idea we were most interested in taking forward, and therefore had done the most development on it. We wanted the time to get people excited about our idea.
The presentation went well, with us explaining at the end that our main issue was knowing what kind of game to turn this into; whether it should be a single-player, a co-operative game, etc.
This was what then became the topic of discussion in the peer review later that afternoon. A similar thing happened during this peer review as had been happening throughout our entire development of this project, which is that people were constantly confused between the theme of "community", the fact we had two protagonists, and why it wasn't instantly a co-operative game. This confusion either means we haven't done a good enough job in establishing our idea, or that the particular people giving feedback are not acquainted with games like the ones I mentioned in my blog on this topic.
Our course leader advised us that if we weren't interested in doing a co-operative game, then there would be no point in testing it as the testing results would be tainted by our discontent with the idea. What was difficult about this was that Kerris wasn't present for the peer review, so whilst Sid and I have a strong opinion on making the game single-player, she wasn't there to pitch in and potentially defend her desire to make a co-operative game.
During this process I noticed myself getting more and more emotional the more feedback we received. This is because the feedback was pulling the game away from being narrative-driven, something I already felt I had compromised on a lot, to the extent that I wasn't truly passionate about the narrative I'd crafted or the characters I'd created. I was attempting to make a game that somehow added narrative on top of gameplay, as that's what Kerris had said she wanted, rather than focusing on the narrative and letting the gameplay build itself from that. During this peer review I realised just how far I had strayed from the subject I was passionate about, and how little the game we had made had any resemblance to my original theme of Fables.
I'm not sure what to do about this right now, with us going into phase four, but I know I don't think I can continue working on an idea that is so far from something I'm passionate about.