Exhibition Page
This page could be considered coupled as production diary of the Exhibition held to promote our game/demo and an evaluation of it. Within this page, I will analyse and evaluate several areas of the exhibition whilst comparing it to the original idea as planned.
Exhibition Set-Up
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Through the duration of this project, the class and I have been developing work to be produced and displayed at our exhibition held at a local art gallery. Today is the first day of our four-day exhibition period, with the whole day being dedicated to setting up the exhibition. As the leader for the writing team of group A, I decided to help set up our stand within the exhibition – whilst deciding final layouts and the general presentation for the writing team.
Pre-planned in a previous diary, the writing team produced several NPC profiles that gave some general information about the NPC at hand. These were then printed off and served as posters around our stall, decorating the walls and making them more inviting to the members of the public. An attractive exhibit would allow members of the public to engage more with our teams and therefore our reputation/ideas would be able to spread quickly. If a member of the public has left our stand with a good experience, they are more likely to recommend us to other people, allowing our potential audience to grow – attracting more people and repeating the cycle.
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Using these posters, with the other team’s agreement that they do the same, posters were scattered across our shelf display with artwork, to advertise all of our teams not just each team individually. By doing this, it also shows the public our great teamwork skills and proves that we are a fully functioning games development team – all be it only for this project. By demonstrating this team work, it creates a more welcoming vibe for the public, showing that we are happy to communicate – therefore increasing their experience at our stand.
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This proved to be effective when talking to the public, with the artwork drawing them to our exhibit and then being able to produce a conversation from it. With all the artwork and character profiles integrated, it allowed for a group discussion including several teams – enabling the public to easily talk to any member of our group without feeling intimidated, as the discussion could carry on naturally. An example being one audience member I spoke to, they were interested within both the artistic and narrative approaches to the game. I spoke to her first but after answering her questions and having a discussion I then was able to naturally move the conversation onto the artistic approach – then introducing an available artist into the discussion, as to then allow for a more accurate representation.
A problem we encountered when setting up the exhibition was within the neon light display; the lights would only work when the wire was positioned within a certain manner. I was designated to fix this because I have some brief experience with this technical difficulty. Within the exhibition hall, the only electrical outlets are found within hatches on the floor, providing two plug sockets. At first we thought the issue was due to the plug of the neon lights being physically too big to fit into the plug socket whilst also allowing the hatch to shut – therefore cutting off the electrical flow. However, after some tinkering, we found that the fault was within the wire itself and not the plug – like originally thought. This was when I was left to solve the issue and wire the stand up with electricity.
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As these lights were designed to be active for long periods of time, they produce minimal heat. To be cautious, I made sure to tape the wire in place within the gap of the light; therefore, the chances of igniting the tape are minimised if overheating was to occur. This tactic was also used when fixing the lights to the table.
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Despite this fix, there was another dilemma relating to the electrics; due to the size of the plug compared to the plug socket, there wasn’t enough room within the hatch to supply power to two different pieces. Solving this issue, I ran a multi-headed extension lead from the plug socket to under the table – therefore providing multiple sources of power close to the table. I also did this to minimise the amount of wires running from open spaces as they look unprofessional and multiple wires increase the chance of a trip hazard.
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This new trip hazard was also considered and resolved by applying my previous knowledge of when I set up for a local event. By taping the wires to the ground/walls with the tape provided, the risk of a trip hazard is decreased and would pass a health and safety check – therefore making our exhibit approvable by the art gallery hosting it. Further utilising this knowledge, I also fully unspooled the extension lead as to prevent a fire hazard – if not, excessive use/overheat could melt the wires as they were so tightly compacted.
Overall, the set-up stages of our exhibition were a huge success – preventing us from having to divide our attention from our audience to fix/adjust our exhibit, allowing us to be dedicated to them solely. This attention was key as to fully commune our ideas and input of the game/demo and therefore portray an accurate representation of it. If I were to attempt this again, I would dedicate more time in advance to test our equipment for technical issues, therefore providing us chance to fully fix them; instead of making a temporary fix.
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Finalised Exhibition Products
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Through the duration of this project, the writers and I have been focused on developing work to be used within the final game/demo – developing ideas and creating scripts to be implemented. Therefore, to display our contribution to our game, we needed to provide some material to be shown at the writers stand for our exhibition. As mentioned previously throughout my diaries, we planned on producing several elements:
Script
Fully finalised with a front cover, we managed to provide three bound and published versions of our script – which were displayed on our stand and ready for our audience to read if they wanted. I feel that this piece fully enforced what the writing team and I have produced for the game, by providing physical copies of final dialogue.
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As planned, the script wasn’t very popular amongst our audience, with only a few of them reading it in its entirety. On the other hand, many people older than our target audience was enthralled by our work and gladly read the script – reinforcing our initial belief that younger audiences need exhibits they can interact with. We received several compliments through this and hooked several older members – with them asking to explain our processes and decisions.
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Overall, I feel that our script was successful at attracting older members of the public to our game, allowing us to commune with them about games design in general – not just our field of writing. I believe this to be successful because it allowed us to inform them that game’s design is indeed a real career path – helping them understand the intricacies of our field. However, many of our own audience didn’t interact with the script much, choosing however to go to our other exhibit – the ‘advent calendar’.
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‘Advent Calendar’
Changed completely from our original idea, the writing team and I produced decorated sheet of card including; our characters, their dialogues and the map of the dome. As discussed previously in my production diaries, this piece was originally intended to be 3D with windows that opened to reveal the character’s speech. However, through the time lost after creating the original ‘advent calendar’ (later stolen), we ran out of time to implement windows - therefore the planned interactivity.
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Using a variety of vibrant colours, our ‘advent calendar’ attracted the most attention from our stall, despite its initial planned interactivity not being implemented. On the other hand, I feel that it was a happy mistake as to not include the windows – after the first day of the exhibition, the ‘advent calendar’ had experienced some wear, demonstrating that the windows would not have lasted long anyway.
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Overall, the ‘advent calendar’ was successful at attracting attention from a range of audiences however, if I had the chance to reattempt, I would start creation sooner – allowing time for these set-backs whilst producing a piece that stuck to the original idea plans. Despite this, the effectiveness of this ‘advent calendar’ was evident through the amount of people visiting our stall – allowing us to talk with them.
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Dome Diorama
This piece did not start production due to the lack of time to spare from multiple groups. The original idea was for the class to produce a miniature diorama of the dome our game takes place in, marking our key locations and interactions. However, it was mutually decided to halt the piece’s development indefinitely – as to focus time/work onto producing the finalised game.
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Overall, I feel that this piece would have attracted a lot of attention, had it been made. The unique idea and marketing strategy surrounding this diorama would catch the public’s eye. Despite this, the writers and I decided not to adopt this piece due to our production of the already time consuming ‘advent calendar’.
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Make Your Own Adventure
Not implemented within our own stall, the Make Your Own Adventure piece was displayed within another team’s stall – therefore we decided to cancel production of our own version. We decided this because, if we imitated their ideas, the public would wear tired of both our stalls rather quickly -due to us displaying similar pieces.
This seemed to prove a rather hindering idea, the other writing team displaying this piece attracted lots of attention from younger audiences – proving to be a very effective idea. However, due to being in different groups, I did not manage to ask them about it’s benefits.
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Overall, despite the proved effectiveness, I feel like it was a good decision to cancel production of this piece. If both groups were to display it, I think that both groups would suffer from lack of interest – therefore this decision proved to be minorly beneficial.
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NPC Character Profiles
Despite not being originally planned, the writing team and I produced character profiles for the non-playable characters within our game. We decided to produce these as it would allow players to gain additional information about the NPCs scattered throughout our game. These were also produced as a decorative, effectively functioning as posters – due to the lack hung exhibits.
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These exhibits proved to be rather successful with all audiences – with people pointing them out and discussing characters. Leading to several discussions for both the writing team and art team, the NPC profiles sparked questions for the public and helped them engage with both us and our game.
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Overall, I feel that it was an effective decision to make NPC profiles because they helped engage and immerse the public with our game and its characters. It was also a good way to display our character developments and demonstrate the amount of thought behind creating a compelling character. I feel that the pieces displayed over the exhibition proved effective at drawing attention from the public and our audiences – allowing us to discuss ideas and answer any questions they posed. However, if I were to attempt this again, I would ensure that we have an array of exhibits and activities to provide – allowing us to attracts and retain audiences more efficiently.
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Click On Images To Download Results
Exhibition Time
Because of our work throughout the duration of this project, and the several days leading up to it, the final exhibition was ready to be shown to the public; allowing all of us a chance to gain feedback directly from our audience and other members of the public. This was a chance to commune with potential audiences as well as gather information about them and their opinions of our project.
As mentioned in a previous diary, all three classes built a survey for the public to fill out that could be applicable to all three games. Printing this survey off, we kept a pile of them on our table to then ask any willing public member to fill out and give us written feedback. Despite receiving a plethora of verbal feedback during the exhibition, written feedback was needed because we might’ve forgotten/altered our memory of verbal feedback – where as written feedback can portray more accurate results.
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These results were rather interesting, due to us standing there/near the participants, I thought the survey would have more bias results and lean in favour of our work. However, several of the results seem to view an honest opinion, with the participant acknowledging faults and floors within our project. These results are reassuring because I now know that they are more reliable and therefore can project an honest opinion.
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A majority of our survey participants enjoyed our characters and found them engaging with scores favouring ‘yes’ over ‘no extent’ or ‘no’. Upon reflection, I feel that our questions were too vague because we only now what the participant thought of our characters; not why. If the participant were to express their opinion on why, we would have a clearer understanding on what was a success and what we would have to develop further. This issue is also seen throughout several questions posed within the survey – therefore our results could have been more valuable had it been implemented.
Unlike the written feedback, verbal feedback was more beneficial to me – allowing me to ask tailored questions to the public whilst receiving tailored questions in return. Several people complimented the originality of our planned game explaining that, though similar to another similar franchise, our game is quite unique, exploring several ideas that appealed to them. One member explained to me that they had seen a relatable character within our game, explaining that they felt represented through our androgynous character; Patch. This discussion was crucial because of Patch being my character and therefore, I wanted to know whether I represented them effectively. The member said that, though some minor details were wrong (explaining that “Patch shouldn’t be too shy - I feel that it might mis-represent the community, but that’s just [their] personal opinion and you should probably get more opinions on that”), they felt like Patch was one of the few representative characters within the game’s industry – providing us with a unique selling point over competing games.
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Our unique characters were also brought up frequently, with members of the public asking about them. A couple members of our target audience also approached us, asking about our characters. After talking to them, they said that they related to Lucas, making a remark that Lucas’ actions are seem right but are perceived differently than intended, much like themselves and their parents/guardians. Through this comment, I feel that the writing team and I were successful at making a relatable character for our audience – which might allude to how well immersed the public were, according to our survey results.
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Overall, I feel that the exhibition was immensely successful. I received an overwhelming amount of feedback from both our audience and the public, allowing me to think about how I would develop this further – if I could. If I were to attempt this again, I would create a more thorough survey to gather more useful data to apply. To do this, I would ask less closed questions, allowing the public to input their opinion – rather than ticking boxes that they felt related to their experience. Questioning why they thought the way they did would also boost the reliability of our game, rather then presuming the reasons they thought the way they did.
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If I were to develop this further than the demo, I would further explore the NPCs in our game; making them more interactable and allowing more chances for the player to relate to them – helping feed into their immersion. Also, by expanding upon our characters, it would give a chance to represent other social groups within the game, therefore appealing to them as well. An example would be to explore Baz and Damien’s relationship through a side story, allowing for the player to see a more personal side to our characters.
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I feel that the exhibition was very successful, allowing us to gain feedback from the public as well as our target audiences. This event also coupled as a good way to display our work and relieve stress built throughout this processes - allowing us to talk about our decisions and choices whilst also allowing us to ask/receive questions. As seen above, I have gone into detail about the three main areas of the exhibition and evaluated them separately but i feel the exhibition as a whole was successful - gaining knowledge we wouldn't of attained otherwise.