Author: Allen Tingley

Check Check One Two One Two It’s Team Pillow Castle Here With Newsletter #13!

Okay, that’s enough of that nonsense.

Pillow Castle is coming to you from a long strange week of conversations and deliberations. This is going to be a difficult newsletter to write, because I can’t really talk about specifics of those discussions without, like, SPOILER VISION or something, but at the same time, we had some very unique challenges that I think will be worth exploring. So let’s see if I can do that. This could get complicated.

The team really needs a vision for what this game will be two years from now. That’s as plain as I can say it. We all have ideas about where it is headed and where things might go, but we didn’t have a damn thing written down in stone by the time GDC rolled around. We had spent so much time focusing on usability and puzzle creation that we had neglected most, if not all, of our difficult narrative and theming questions and pushed them all toward the end of development. Woops.

These aren’t easy questions to answer for five people. We don’t have a Creative Director here at Pillow Castle. We don’t have a President or a Chairman or a Founder or a Boss. We have Albert, and he’s definitely our like, you know, head dude, but we all know that none of us on the team is solely responsible for the vision of the game moving forward. This is a blessing and a curse. It gives everyone some ownership and autonomy in creating the world where Museum will take place, but it also means that there isn’t a champion to drag us through the mire when we get bogged down in simple questions.

For two days this week we talked about what the game would “feel like”, with nothing concrete coming out of it. Start over smaller. Two days talking about a mundane task to start the game (obscuring facts) with no result. Start over smaller. Spend two days talking about a location? No result. Start over smaller. Finally, finally, we as a team come up with a real plan:

Albert would create a basic outline for the story to follow, and we as a team would start from there. He did it in an hour, and it consisted of maybe 100 words total, but it was enough for team to really grab hold of something and start moving forward with decisions.

A few days later we had a complete story including setting and character and a lot of ideas on how we could move forward. All from a simple outline busted out in less than an hour. Never underestimate the power of just sitting down and MAKING something — especially when you are stuck for a while. We knew that was the solution all along, but we refused to listen to our brains and instead were trying to listen to our guts.

Our guts are stupid. So are yours. Start listening to your brain.

Okay. next week we have to wrap up pre-production and develop a presentation for softs. We also have to create two videos, and I hear-tell there is a revamp of the website in the works, too. This is going to be a doozy, but the clock is winding down til school’s out for summer, and the team is back to running on all cylinders thanks to sleep and sunlight and an actionable plan.

See you next week, pillows!

Good April! It’s Almost Warm! Pillow Castle is thawing! Life is good.

We were able to discuss a lot of the “hurt feelings” created by our halves presentation this week, and feel that we addressed a lot of the concerns with our pitch and with thoughtful conversations with those affected. Hopefully no one thinks we’re a bunch of ego jerk heads. If they do, they should come hang out with us. Or we’ll come hang out with them. Or whatever. Maybe just camp outside their house. Hold up signs like “We Love You!” This is getting weird.

It’s interesting how something that we viewed as innocuous could in fact be taken so wrongly. A lesson on perspective and on audience. We neglected to think about the audience that wasn’t interested in a team from the ETC doing well and being a strong team at the same time — they are interested in the project work, the measurable results, the hard and fast academic bits and bobs.

We aren’t the best team at that stuff. Let’s just put that out there. No one would accuse any of us of being academics if we weren’t in graduate school, and there is definitely a gulf we as a team half to cross from “artistic expression” to “academic expression”. Xiao and Albert are definitely able to communicate on that level a little more concretely than the rest of us, and so we need to rely on them a little bit more to tell the factual aspects of our development process more clearly.

We also need to think about how our peers will consider us after this presentation. While we originally didn’t think that by showing us having fun we would be alienating people, it’s fair to note that jealousy is a thing that exists, and ignoring it doesn’t mean that it will go away. We in no way intended to inspire jealousy in our peers — in fact the opposite: we wanted to inspire them to have the same kind of fun — but according to some, that plan fell on deaf ears.

We regrouped and gave a damn good pitch presentation on Wednesday full of facts and figures and numbers. It was a little weird to spend the previous five days being embroiled in office politics, only to find that half of those people we were concerned about weren’t even in the room during the presentation nor were they intending to contribute feedback. That was either very good luck or a weird sign that we had our priorities crooked.

No matter – we have three and a half weeks to complete preproduction on the entire first chapter of the game. That’s a serious endeavor, and one we all plan to attack with fervor. Forget all this GDC nonsense and academic this-and-that, we as a team have a damn game to make. Lately we’ve forgotten that. Time to kick the tires and light the fires.

We are not fighting aliens. But we ARE fighting bugs!

Take care out there,

-Pillow Castle

Welcome to Pillow Castle’s 11teenth Newsletter!

So. Yeah. Halves happened.

The team is pretty beat up after our bout at GDC. We had a wonderful time and it was a great opportunity for everyone to learn about what these sorts of events were like, and to be able to be compared to games we consider to be well above our own was a real treat to everyone… but now it was time to get back to work and as we said last week, the gas tank was running a little low.

We pulled together the beginnings of a presentation for halves which followed the structure of what we had seen at GDC — lots of images, very few words. We rehearsed around the idea of being excited about our game and the opportunity we had and wanting to share that feeling with everyone else. In the end, we were focused on our progress as a group learning to work together and as our game as a possible product, and not so much on the school side of things.

Yuxi made a great video from the footage we had taken at GDC and Zhengyi and Xiao worked hard to distill their work into thoughts we could share with the crowd. We decided not to show a live playthrough of the game because we had lots of information we wanted to get out there, and instead opted for animated GIFs to quickly show the levels, because we had limited time.

The audience seemed to enjoy the presentation, but on Sunday we got Feedback that it was actually a mixed bag. We will find out more next week, but apparently some of the faculty and students considered our display of enthusiasm as boastful or even egotistical — going so far as to say we were “cocky.” The team is a little shaken up by the initial feedback of what we thought was a playful presentation, but we’ll know more after we have a chance to talk with faculty.

On top of all this, we have our second round pitch for the Fall next Wednesday. We have to prepare a new presentation and get the faculty back on our side. Wish us luck! I think we’ll be okay 🙂

Now if we could just get some sleep…

(“Sleep is for the weak!” – Yuxi)

Good thing we have her around to keep us moving!

-Pillow Castle

Hey from Pillow Castle.

We’re GDC Hungover. Like, okay, not from alcohol or anything, not at all. Just — imagine you have to talk for 8 days straight. Our brains are mushy. They aren’t totally liquid yet — I’m able to type this at roughly half my normal speed — but they’re close to mush.

Why? Because GDC was awesome, that’s why. Awesome and exhausting. Our team has worked so hard for almost three months to get to this point, and it felt like the culmination of all of that happened over the course of a never-ending week of wonder.

Can you tell we aren’t jaded developers yet? (We hear that happens at GDC #3…)

Where to start…

We got into San Francisco Saturday Afternoon and took in the sights. We were stationed in the appropriately named Japantown Hotel Kabuki. It was a nice hotel a little further away from the conference than we liked, but it made up for it in amazing dollar stores and fresh sushi.

Monday was our first day at the conference. We attended lots of talks spread throughout, but the team spent a good amount of time in the IGF Track talks, which were full of inspiring indie developers talking about getting their ideas off the ground and into the hands of others. It is one thing to call yourself a game developer and go to school for it and do it in your spare time, but until you’re in a room full of a thousand other like-minded people, it really doesn’t sink in how real this thing can be. Wow. GDC.

Tuesday was more of the same. In-between talks we’ve been able to check out some awesome indie games and talk to a lot of their developers, like, straight up. Just walk up and say hello. And some of them have even heard of our game! Tomorrow we set up our IGF booth and the first day of terror begins. We don’t know what to expect exactly, but we’re excited and nervous at the same time.

Not only do we set up our booth tomorrow, but we also have to give a talk at an Intel showcase the day after. We’ve been practicing our presentation at the hotel in the evenings (apologies to the neighbors next door) and we felt pretty good about it. Little did we know what was coming…

Wednesday was just awesome. What more can we say. Person after person got to walk up to our little IGF booth, sit down, and play our game (mostly without problems!) The playtesting really paid off.

Not only were there just like, “normal” people coming to check out our game, but a lot of our favorite developers were there, too! And they wanted to play. What the hell.

There was a lot of great advice given from the likes of Chris Bell, Kyle Gray, Galactic Cafe, Lucas Pope, Alexander Bruce, Auriea Harvey, Cliff Bleszinski, and others. It was really weird to watch. And kind of scary. But the awesome kind of scary.

One thing we realized today was that our game is in a very early state for something like the IGF competition. We feel very lucky and honored to be here presenting, but a lot of the other IGF games were finished awesome products. It seemed kind of silly to be presenting next to them, but hell, it wasn’t like we were going to say no…

Wednesday night was the IGF awards at the Game Developer’s Choice Awards. The team got to sit at a super swanky table full of super swanky people award show style. Xiao got to take a picture with Alexander Bruce. It was pretty awesome. And he’s a normal guy who seemed substantially awkward – YES! Just like us.

The bad news, I guess: We didn’t win “Best Student Game” — that went to the stupendously awesome game Risk of Rain, as it should have. I will admit, there was briefly a moment (around when we discovered an awkward typo on our IGF signage that read “winner”) where we thought we might have a shot at this thing. But that was hubris. And maybe some alcohol. Either way, we got to see our game up on the big screen! We got to drink a lot of wine! And we attended the first of many (we hope) awards shows for Museum in the future…

Thursday was a tired day, but we had to be even more on top of our game than we were on Wednesday. The crowd seemed twice as hungry to check out games, and many people wanted to experience the game after seeing it during the IGF awards ceremony the night before.

On top of that, we had to bust out early to give a presentation at the Intel University Showcase across the street. This showcase was put together by Intel to show what top game programs were doing with their technology — it was billed as a “grudge match” of sorts, and the winner would receive $10,000 of hardware for their school.

We went into it thinking our game was gonna blow the the whole thing away. Wooops.

Turns out there are programs out there (NOT NAMING NAMES) that spend a year or more working on games with up to 60 person teams. That’s pretty intense in comparison to the work the ETC (read: our team) does. The games that were being presented were near Triple A quality, and while they might not have been “cutting edge” by indie standards, they were all incredible games that seemed polished to a level of completeness that we could not come close to.

Couple that with NONE of the A/V equipment working during the showcase (Intel was yelling at the Hotel, the Hotel was yelling at the A/V company, the A/V company was plugging and unplugging things, etc.) The whole showcase, unfortunately for us, turned into a little bit of a farce, but we presented the game all the same and the audience seemed to enjoy it. We got to see some other great students games, and it gave us context for what the ETC is and where student projects should target in the future (more EGW, less Intel Showcase).

Friday. Last day of the conference. We were all pretty tired, but there were a few more very important missions to accomplish. Firstly: The Experimental Gameplay Workshop is the closing session of GDC, so Albert had to be MIA from 1:00pm onward to prepare for his presentation. Meanwhile, IGN had been teasing us with a video playthrough that they finally nailed down in the morning, which meant Allen had to go across town ALSO around 1:00PM to record the playthrough at IGN’s offices (which was awesome, BTW.)

Everyone planned to meet back at the EGW conference at 2:00PM to watch Albert close down the GDC conference… with one slight problem: we left behind some gear at the booth thinking that we would have ample opportunity to return to it after EGW. We were wrong.

The team got to see 20 incredibly inspirational games one right after the other, and Albert gave a great presentation of some of the advanced Museum of Simulation Technology ideas to over 1400 game developers from around the world. How freaking cool is that? We all collapsed in a heave of relaxation after the event ended and headed back to our booth to collect our stuff and call it an event.

Cue Metal Gear Solid “Alert” exclamation point: our stuff was gone! All of it! Including Allen’s famous green coat you’ve probably never seen him without. What the hell, right? Right. The team talked to a lot of really annoyed and unhelpful people who just wanted to go home, and eventually they convinced us that we too just wanted to go home. We had a successful event. Fuck the coat and cables. Beds were waiting.

We had one more day to relax in Japantown before boarding our flight back to freezing, snowy Pittsburgh. We’d like to say we spent it recapping the event and strategizing for the future, but mostly we were too tired to talk. The planning could come later.

People had said that GDC would take a lot out of us, but we had no idea what we were in for. It’s been a long semester, already, and the team is running very low on energy and motivation – not for lack of trying, but for lack of time sleeping. Once we get back to Pittsburgh we have about a month of school requirements to take care of and then we will be able to relax a little.

Starting with our halves presentation. Hrm… Monday sounds like a good day to worry about that…

-Pillow Castle

Good Afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of fine taste and attitude. We are Pillow Castle, and we are freaking out because we have to board a plane in 8 hours.

No. Wait. It’s good. We’re good.

She packed my bags last night, pre-flight

Zero hour, nine a.m.

And I’m gonna be high as a kite by then

I miss the Earth so much, I miss my wife

It’s lonely out in space

On such a timeless flight

And I think it’s gonna be a long, long time

‘til touch down brings me round again to find

I’m not the man they think I am at home

Oh no, no, no, I’m a rocket man

Rocket man, burning out his fuse up here alone…

I don’t know why I’m quoting Elton John on a Pillow Castle newsletter. Most of our team wasn’t born when that song was a hit. I’m not going to look that up to verify it, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.

Anyway, we’re ready. Bags are packed. We’ve got T-shirts, 200 business cards, 200 stickers, a banging poster, a bunch of wires and laptops and cameras and fears, and a lot of hope.

We also created this little teaser trailer just posted to youtube. It’s got some attitude. Cause we’re fun and stuff!

Lets go, GDC.

This last week was good for the team. We ironed out the last few issues we had with the show floor demo, practiced some presentations we would have to give, and tried to make sure we didn’t forget our deodorant. The team feels good about talking to random strangers for days on end, and we hope that there’s some cool new other games to check out when we have time. We’ll be meeting up with our external advisor Kyle Gray at some point, as well as our fellow ETCers out on the West Coast. Rumor has it there is some serious partying that goes on after hours. I have a feeling we’ll be too tired for any of that (but I could be wrong?)

None of us have ever been to anything like GDC. There’s a lot of excitement in our camp about getting to show the game to so many people. We’ve but an incredible amount of time into playtesting and iterating on our floor demo that we’re sick of the damn thing, but at least we know it’s rock solid and we won’t be bug fixing on the floor.

As students, it’s been an interesting ride trying to prepare for this as well as remain up-to-date in our classes and fulfilling all of our requirements the ETC has for our project. We’ve expressed before the sometimes polar opposite pull that occurs here, and although there is a strategy for dealing with it (make stuff that works for both) we realize our concerns right now aren’t related to education, necessarily, and that it’s up to us to turn these events into teachable moments.

First step: get everyone to the airport on time tomorrow. 7am Take-off. This could be one of the larger challenges facing us on the next 8 days. Wish us luck.

Hello from Pillow Castle!

T-minus one week until we have to be on a plane to GDC – the team is anxious but working hard to meet our goals. The road to a successful IGF presentation is paved with scary deadlines and hard decisions, but we feel like we’ve done everything we can to be ready for this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Over the last two weeks, we’ve been making small iterative changes to the first four puzzle levels in order to get as close as we can to a smooth, enjoyable experience for players. We will be on the floor with hundreds of people walking by – it’s important that the audience not only see the game, but see the person playing it is enjoying themselves and isn’t frustrated. No one likes a frustrating game.

Along with those levels, we’ve been playtesting our new tutorial section that Albert and Zhengyi built from scratch.  It isn’t clever or creative, but that’s the point – we want to make sure everyone reads, participates, and understands the rules of the game before we move too deeply in.

The tutorial, however, isn’t all that exciting to the playtesters – a lot of them have been skipping aspects of it because they think they already know what it says, or that it’s not useful.

People do not like to read text in video games, it turns out! 🙁

We’re going to try adding some other visual and audio queues with what limited time we have left to test. Next week is Spring Break here at home base Pillow Castle, which means all of our would-be playtester vacate the area for warmer climates. We’ll be in the office, crunching away, panicking our little hearts out as we count down the hours til our Plane takes off.

We aren’t nervous or anything.

The daily playtests have really helped us clean up a lot of the rough edges of the demo and we’re starting to feel like we’re in a good place for GDC. Albert’s EGW levels are also coming along nicely, and he’s got some sweet ideas cooked up for the crowd.

Oh yeah, we also have to put together some presentations and stuff. Crap. Need to do that. There’s always next week…

-Pillow Castle Out!

Good evening, pillow castle denizens! Here’s another lovely update from our team about progress as we blaze a trail to GDC.

First – let’s get that extra special news out of the way… museum of simulation technology was accepted into the EXPERIMENTAL GAMEPLAY WORKSHOP 2014!

Yes!

The Experimental Gameplay Workshop is a prestigious forum at GDC where game-makers from around the world are invited to present the weird and wonderful work they’ve been doing in the world of video games. Often these games are far from complete or are just proof of concepts – right where our game is!

The great thing about EGW in our minds is that we’ve had the opportunity to put our game in front of a lot of non game developers to get their reaction – but we haven’t had a chance to put our ideas to the test against people who spend their days working on weird games. This is a great opportunity for us.

However, it does create some scheduling / production difficulties that we’ll have to deal with over the next two weeks as we crunch to hit our GDC goals.

The initial plan, to put the entire team working on the four initial levels of the Museum so that they can be playtested daily and refined is going to have to change slightly. We need new, creative puzzles to show the audience at EGW, and to fulfill that, Albert will be splitting off of the main level team to work on experimental puzzle levels.

These levels won’t have art or themeing, and they won’t be playtested outside of a few “does this make sense?” tests. Because Albert will get to drive the game during the presentation of these levels, we can cheat a little bit and save time on polish and presentation that we really don’t have. Two weeks is a short shot away from here!

On top of that, we’re attempting to design a new tutorial section for the game so that we can better explain our mechanics and the gameplay to novice users. We are expecting a large number of players at GDC will not have seen/experienced our game before, so we want to do as much work as we can to explain things to them in-game.

We will be testing the iterations on the first four levels and also the tutorial daily. We’ve got a new playtesting strategy – quality over quantity – and we feel that if we are able to get one or two really good, new “kleenex” playtesters a day, that can be just as useful as 4-5 people who may have seen or experienced the project before.

Playtesting has already shown us that we have a lot of work to do in the third and fourth levels (“fan” and “moon”) and Zhengyi, Yuxi, and Xiao are on top of making these levels work as smoothly as they can in the next two weeks.

Wish us luck!