Hour of Fun

Last week, in our production lecture, we were introduced to a development technique known as the 'hour of fun'. It is basically an hour (usually 4 o'clock on a Friday when creativity is at its minimum) where all the members of the studio will stop working and start play testing their game(s). Someone will usually observe the team playing and make notes on anything that works or doesn't work. They will then sit, as a group, and discuss the game and give any feedback or share any problems they had whilst playing the game. This technique has been adopted by development studios around the world. Studios such as Tim Schafer's Double Fine Productions and, our Production and Design tutors, Ben Hill and James Burton's very own indie studio White Paper Games.

As a class we then had our very own hour of fun. There wasn't many members of each team that attended this particular class but it was still very useful. I was the member of the team that was observing and making notes and it was really interesting seeing people attempting to play our short and breakable tech demo. I got a lot of great feedback in particular from my tutor Ben, who's experience in the hour of fun was evident as he tried his hardest to break the game in every way imaginable.

All in all we got some great feedback from the rest of the group and some things to work on but it wasn't anything we didn't already know about before. The tech demo level shows off the mechanics great but isn't exactly representative of what a final level design will look or play like in the finished version of the game. However, I did find it very interesting to see other people play the game for the first time. I feel that this technique will be extremely useful when we have a more playable level with real challenges which we should do in a few weeks when our Vertical Slice is ready. It will be very interesting next time round.

Bye bye!