GDD710 Development Practice Module - Week 10 - Research
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This week covers abit of backwards topics surrounding the Agile methodology. Due to my academic experience in game development, I have followed various projects to the Agile bear minimum to that it ensures a client's specifications and acknowledgements, to further modifications to take place without any strain on the project deadline. For a further discussion on Agile, feel free to catch up on my week 1 blog covering Time Management and Agile Development. For those who wanted s short and snappy description, Agile is a series of methods, philosophies and fraemworks surrounding the focus of evolving solutions and interative process, through small increments made in a self-methodised manner.
Agile Practices mentioned in supplied course material is classed as a reliance, instead of a practical process. Which I can fully agree upon due to Agile's ongoing change in various uses of industry, until it's eventualy a re-written methodolody (Waldock, 2020)
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Incorporating Agile Practices to Further Games Development
When certain projects end up requiring technical TLC and delicacy, Agile Practices become of great importance due to its broad flexibility on change, provided the current status of the project is progressive and mutual terms to consider improvements. My present workflow on this module has been supported by Agile to ensure a smooth transition between the weekly content, minus the time management which is personally challenging to maintain because of outside study commitments. Taking tasks into small chunks allows persistence to naturally take its course without sitting for hours at my computer stressing as I focus strongly whilst under the smallest of pressure as a self-motivator.
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Envisioning
It has always been a challenge in myself to think ahead, especially long-term in any context. The term "Envision" is referring to the generlised size of your project and predict where you're accomplishments are heading. The ideal goal here is to outline your overall criteria for for in my case, a game to the highest measures possible (Scott W. Amber, 2005) . I can relate this going back to last week regarding my "playable" Rapid Ideation 2. The majority of my tasks needed to be envisioned on a high measure which could have resolved my lack of functionality. One being to write not a whole design or technical doc, but note down any thoughts or inspirations that I could refer back to and have a stronger and smoother plan to fall back upon. My head just dived straight into the real-world theme problem which I believe I took too realistically, causing me to underestimate how much I could implement around the study time I made available.
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Estimation
The benefits of Agile Estimations outline the general facts and figures around your product which are instantly shared to display any additional content from the development teams integration plans. Provided the team take into account estimations whilst using Agile movement, this will lead to further allowance on future statistics and user stories that can be considered for implementation (Ashish Dhawan, 2021). If the majority of team members are content in the estimations of Agile, their response times and efforts increase indefinitely because of all that agreement and participation on estimating at the start instead of spiralling into different unpredictive and unwise directions. Say an estimation was needed for quite large figures, The Bucket System would your best course of action. A diagram is drawn up on a series of tables containing numbers that range from 0-250 in fixed variations. Tasks are then written out on cards and randomised. Once the first card is selected, it is placed at number 8 for referencing. This sends the team members off to discuss the first noted tasks on the cards, followed by their own tasks to add on the estimation scale.
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User Stories & Persona
This weeks challenge was quite different compared the previous. We were tasked to create a User Persona based on either of the 2 Rapid Ideations. A "User Persona" is a technical representation or digital alias of an inidvidual who may potentially use your app or play your game. Mainly used in web-based and user-related design, User Personas adopt a character build towards the target audience. It is classed as a strong grasper of ideal information. This assists to input user data and make the target design specification of your product. It is a highly recommended tool to cover a reasonable and justifiable amount of users that may become highy interactable with your app/game. A Persona is constructed through the efforts of user research.
This can be carried out from individual interviews, quesionarres and essential playtesting. It does't have to be all text based for adopting a Persona. When developing a game, it is important to consider some profiling before you make a User Persona. This involves the target demographic (age, gender and perhaps family status), social background, List fo technological devices currently being used, a passion or motivation from gaming as well as non-game related hobbies, considerable goals or aspiratoions and a picture or visual representation (Jacqueiline Zenn, 2017). The main thing to comprehend from User Personas is that they an designed to build patterns of one behaviour, aspiratons and goals with some randomised personal details to add some flavour to the non-realistic user entity that is a Persona.
I did not consider a User Persona for either of my Rapid Ideation due to 2 reasons. One being current playable state of Rapid Ideation 2, as well as Rapid Ideation 1 is about self-reflection so building a profile on someone who is analysing themselves seem trickede due the fact it was text-adventure based. Below is my attempted build of a User Persona for Rapid Ideation 1.
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Rapid Ideation 1 User Persona
Figure 1: Vendetta Mask for User Persona Photo (Tarik Haiga, 2020)
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1. Name - Outis (Greek for nobody)
2. Role - Lost soul trying to redeem themslelves through self-reflection.
3. Description - Outis is definitely somebody, not just anybody and can't be everybody. They feel like nobody but a floating entity, recovering their soul and potentially, a body.
4. Quote - "I am stuck between a transiiton that does not explain purpose or perspective. Only a reflection looking back at me and asking recursive questions".
5. Demographic Information - unknown age, unfamiliar with existence. Searching to recover what has been lost or taken.
6. Goals - To find meaning from a life that could have been or has already been.
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User Story
I am not going to discuss what User Story is as this was already covered in the mentioned blog above regarding Time Management and Agile Development. I will on the otherhand, outline some relative User Stories towards the discussed User Persona for Rapid Ideation 1. One relates to the in-game focus and the other relates to personal development practice. Can you guess which is which?
1. User Story 1 - "As a User, I want to develop a game that tests my programming capabilities to thier full potential so that I can demonstrate how much experience I have gained through scripting professionally".
2. User Story 2 - "As an anonymous individual, I want to discover my purpose in this world so that I can reflect upon all the wrongs I have commited and look ahead in how to adapt to change".
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References:
Kyle Cornwell, 2021. Time Management & Agile Development. [Online] Available at: https://www.kylecornwell.com/post/time-management-and-agile-development [Last Accessed 24/08/2021]
Belinda Waldock, 2020. Week 10: Belinda Waldock on the Agile Movement and Practice. [Online] Available at: https://flex.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/912/pages/week-10-belinda-waldock-on-the-agile-movement-and-practice?module_item_id=54148 [Last Accessed 24/08/2021]
Scott W. Amber, 2005. Requirements Envisioning: An Agile Core Practice. [Online] Available at: http://agilemodeling.com/essays/initialRequirementsModeling.htm [Last Accessed 24/08/2021]
Kyle Cornwell, 2021. Communities of Practice. [Online] Available at: https://www.kylecornwell.com/post/communities-of-practice [Last Accessed 24/08/2021]
Ashish Dhawan, 2021. Top 8 Agile Estimation Techniques (Explained with Examples). [Online] Available at: https://www.netsolutions.com/insights/how-to-estimate-projects-in-agile/ [Last Accessed 24/08/2021]
Jacqueline Zann, 2017. How To Create User Personas As Unique As Your Audience. [Online] Available at: https://gameanalytics.com/blog/how-to-create-user-personas-as-unique-as-your-audience/ [Last Accessed 24/08/2021]
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