First two weeks - the game pitch

Beginning this semester, we are going on full production on a complete game until we graduate. Not only the game would apply for the IGF, it could also be the first published that we have. So it's kind of a big deal.

The first two weeks are the pitching phase. Everybody can form team and pitch their idea if they want.  By the end of the first week, there are more than ten pitches going around, many of them are very brilliant and innovative. Choosing one from them becomes a quite painful task.

And the truth is, the choosing process (copied from EA) is quite not I imaged it would be. I like the fact that everybody can choose the game they want to make, which is right thing to do and quite reasonable to be honest. But letting this process going on for a week and the rule that each team must have at least 5 people kind of making everything shifting away from its original purpose. Polities come in, people start to compromise or get influenced by other people. Some choose the strong team that they think that actually got a shot, some just let go and choose the people that they want to work with instead of games. A lot of brilliant ideas get killed because there are not enough people support them. But even though, I believe most of the people are pretty happy about where they are. I guess that's good enough.

For the next cohort, my suggestion would be let people vote two games (in case everybody vote what they pitched, and they would.) that they like the most right after the pitching and feedback is finished. And choose the 5 or 6 game that got most votes and regrouping after that.

Anyway, I'm very glad that I'm working on the game that I like the most. The first gate is after three weeks and we better start working on the prototype.