Production
Boccia Champions
During 3rd year at university, a group of eight students banded together to form Dreaming Turtles; a student team that went on to develop Boccia Champions.
Boccia Champions is a computer simulation of the Paralympic sport Boccia. The game is focused on accessibility and sociability that promotes the values of the client, CHAS.
The objective of the project was to create a game which could be played by anybody, regardless of ability or physical condition. It was designed to implement control schemes and assists that would level the playing field for all participants. The design pillars focused on accessibility, sociability and competition in order to meet these targets.
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As the team leader and producer, it was my job to oversee the overall development of the project with regard to tasks being set and completed, rigorous note taking during discussion, organising meetings and events, ensuring that bugtesting was conducted swiftly and relayed back to the team and that the client was informed and updated on proceedings whilst also adapting the game to their specifications.
Boccia Champions DEvelopment
The project began development in September 2018, and continued through until submission at the end of the second semester on the 7th of May 2019. The project resumed with a short burst of development in September 2019, and the game was published on the 21st of October.
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The game went through several iterations over the course of development.
This is the December build, which was where the game stood at the end of the first semester after ten weeks worth of planning and prototyping. Development focused heavily on functionality of the build above all else before moving onto updating the visuals in the second half of development.
The project grew from strength to strength, and by halfway through the second semester; the game was looking solid. As it took form during the final stages of development, we were able to add some visual flourishes and audio cues. I was responsible for taking care of promoting the project and setting up events and bugtesting throughout the latter stages of the project. The development of the game was covered by the local newspaper and radio stations, as well as several websites.
The game can be played using the keyboard, a mouse, a joystick, a plug in gamepad via USB/Bluetooth and the Xbox Accessibility Controller. Provided by our course leader, Iain Donald, we were able to utilise the accessibility controller all the way through development, which opened up many possibilities for participation. The controller has many jacks on the top and at the sides for inserting peripherals, making it easier for players to adapt the controller to something that would suit them.
With the help of some first year students, McLean Primary School pupils, and the children and young people at CHAS; we received plenty of feedback on the game to help us improve aspects like the user interface, gameplay, visuals and audio. Bugtesting was a crucial aspect of the second phase of development, and it was my responsibility to ensure that bug reports were filed and sent to the team in order to improve/fix issues.
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To further help promote the project, Andrew Murray, a PR officer at Abertay, was keen to interview me, and then the team as a whole, about the project. This resulted in news articles both online and printed; as well as radio segments and also there was going to be a deal with STV for filming within the hospice in relation to development, but unfortunately it never came to fruition.
Boccia Champions Reception
Boccia Champions was covered on Abertay's website, as well as CHAS' website. The project was also printed in the Dundee edition of The Courier and The Lennox Herald in West Dunbartonshire. Four different radio stations covered the story, Heart Scotland and Capital Scotland, followed by Tay FM and Wave FM the following day.
The game was put forward in the student category for the Serious Play Awards, an event all about games that are created with a specific pupose in mind; whether that be education, training simulation, medical or charity.
Boccia Champions won the Bronze award in the non-profit games category.
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The game continued to gain further limelight when it showcased at the V&A in Dundee
in an event called Young People's Design Day. It was later shown off at one of
Abertay's open days within the university, in order to highlight to potential applicants
what they themselves could be making when they reach third year and beyond.
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During this time, the game was featured in the Facebook Live recording that Andrew
Murray was filming to promote the university, exposing the game to any and all interested
parties in the university.
Finally, the game was published on the 21st of October on itch.io alongside several other games made for CHAS by other students. The game is now free to be downloaded and played by anyone. During this time, myself and other core team members worked to ensure the game was ready to be released. I kept team members on track for a few extra weeks during our final year so that the game could be given the last little bit of polish it needed, predominantly to its user interface. I took care of some of the design and technical aspects at this time as we didn't have the same man power by this point.
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The game can be found on CHAS' itch.io page: https://chas-play.itch.io/
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And Team Dreaming Turtles can be found here: https://teamdreamingturtles.wixsite.com/website
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My Role & Contributions
As established throughout this page, my roles were, but not limited to:
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Team Leader
Producer
Co-Designer
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Despite those being my official roles, with such a small dev team comprised of students, I made a point to help out where ever I was needed for the rest of the team, so I did do some audio work, art and the odd technical job too. I was also responsible for organising bug testing sessions and relaying feedback to the team and to our client. As team lead, I also conducted the weekly meetings where we would discuss targets, new approaches or any difficulties we having on the project, as well as making general announcements and updates where applicable.
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With producer as my primary role, it was imperative to guide the project from conceptualisation to completion; under the watchful eyes of academic staff and the requests of the client.
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I was responsible for drafting and re-drafting the production plan, which detailed our methodologies, business models, work schedules, the risk assessment and a stakeholders' analysis; among other things.
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Below are some snippets of said production plan:
I also held the weekly meetings and communicated with the client, and booked events and meetings in the library. I also helped with some design work here and there, did a lot of bug testing & fixes post-submission, and wrote the instruction information. I also assisted with the conceptualisation of the trailers to promote the project and was in contact with the university's PR team. There was a period where we were going to feature on STV to discuss the project and CHAS; but it sadly fell through.
