Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Educational gaming with SCRUM, mobile entertainment and education
We have just published our first, but not last, educative game; taking into consideration the market boom and the great future expected. If I had to bet by some kind of mobile game, this one would be in my list -with all respect to cassual, mental, social, and adults oriented games.
Our bet has been on "Los Lunnis", and we're sure that children will learn a lot enjoying the lessons of Lupita, Lucho and the rest of characters.
Development game.
The idea is based on a production with a game for each character of "Los Lunnis": Lucho, Lupita, Lucila y Lublu. This variety avoids the routine of always seeing the same character again and again.
Each game consists of three minigames, so... do you imagine developing this for 250 different mobiles? phew! with the current jungle in J2ME...I say "current" giving it a hope vote to standars like OMA, but the truth is that i am sceptical about it seeing the current outlook- they have been speaking years about it and everything remains the same.
Time and resources first estimated on this project frightened us at first glance, but the fact is that the project was done in less than three weeks with 2 developers, 1 game designer and 1 graphical designer; how is this possible? The answer is simple: SCRUM and Battlewizard!!!.
Since the game consists of several minigames we decided to divide the project into independent projects. Each project would have its part of design, development, QA, etc... It was important that when we will begin a game the previous was finished.
The image shows how was really important that every step had been carried out to keep progressing. The great advantage that Battlewizard gave us was that we thought in a single code.
Though we didn't had any intention to use SCRUM, finally we found some of its ideas very useful, e.g: We did a list of game funcionalities(Backlog) was based in the game story, also we did iterations which result was a minigame completely functional(Sprint). We used the blackboard of the image like Sprint Backlog, and of course compromise and teamwork.
The keys for project success:
1º The project was approached to the educational content.
2º Planning.
3º Design.
4º Teamwork.
5º Compromise.
6º And of course Battleward.
Now we hope the market will receive with delight our bet on eductional games and we'll keep working in this line.
Our bet has been on "Los Lunnis", and we're sure that children will learn a lot enjoying the lessons of Lupita, Lucho and the rest of characters.
Development game.
The idea is based on a production with a game for each character of "Los Lunnis": Lucho, Lupita, Lucila y Lublu. This variety avoids the routine of always seeing the same character again and again.
Each game consists of three minigames, so... do you imagine developing this for 250 different mobiles? phew! with the current jungle in J2ME...I say "current" giving it a hope vote to standars like OMA, but the truth is that i am sceptical about it seeing the current outlook- they have been speaking years about it and everything remains the same.
Time and resources first estimated on this project frightened us at first glance, but the fact is that the project was done in less than three weeks with 2 developers, 1 game designer and 1 graphical designer; how is this possible? The answer is simple: SCRUM and Battlewizard!!!.
Since the game consists of several minigames we decided to divide the project into independent projects. Each project would have its part of design, development, QA, etc... It was important that when we will begin a game the previous was finished.
The image shows how was really important that every step had been carried out to keep progressing. The great advantage that Battlewizard gave us was that we thought in a single code.
Though we didn't had any intention to use SCRUM, finally we found some of its ideas very useful, e.g: We did a list of game funcionalities(Backlog) was based in the game story, also we did iterations which result was a minigame completely functional(Sprint). We used the blackboard of the image like Sprint Backlog, and of course compromise and teamwork.
The keys for project success:
1º The project was approached to the educational content.
2º Planning.
3º Design.
4º Teamwork.
5º Compromise.
6º And of course Battleward.
Now we hope the market will receive with delight our bet on eductional games and we'll keep working in this line.
posted by flopez : 6:04 pm
