This week we shared our design document with another capstone team, and we collaborated on each other’s work to give feedback, ask questions, and answer questions. It was an interesting experience because I am often uncomfortable showing my work and ideas to people, especially before the ideas have become a finished product.
What I have learned is that I need to open my ideas up to people earlier. The feedback I received was helpful and encouraging, even though there are some places that need improvement. I think going forward this is going to be very important for, not only the capstone, but all game development I do going forward.
The feedback gave me an unexpected amount of inspiration. Going into the assignment I assumed that having another group look at, critique and comment on my work would be disheartening. Instead, the feedback was encouraging, and got my mind running with new ideas and new ways to approach the problems we were trying to solve.
Additionally, it was easier than I thought to disregard feedback that I did not think was right. I assumed that it would be disheartening to read criticism. This made me realize I probably need more criticism in my life, especially in my game development.
So, going forward I am going to try to test my ideas more often with other people. I will make beta versions of my games and open them up at first to people I know and trust the opinions of. Then, gather feedback and iterate on the process. If those that I trust think what I have is good, then I need to open it up to a wider range of people, such as giving free beta versions away online. Then, again, gather feedback and iterate on the product. I know that no game will please everyone, but I am not interested in pleasing everyone. I am interested in creating the best games that I can make, and collaboration and feedback is an important part of that.
