Yesterday’s class was about professionally presenting one game idea. It could have been from the nine initial ideas from our previous homework assignment or to create a brand new idea. For my assignment, I decided to create a new idea. I wasn’t satisfied with my nine original ideas so I sat down and thought about a new game. I wanted to create a digital game, something that could stand a chance in today’s world. So I decided to create a DVD game along with an application game for the smart phones. I think that this time around, a lot of people did come up with better ideas than what they presented on Monday’s class. And a lot of the work did look nicer and cleaner. They may not have reached Jimmy’s expectations on clean presentations, but I saw it as a big improvement from what was presented on Monday’s class because that day, many people only did sketches in pencil and didn’t use colors. This time around, people took the time to draw cleaner and a lot of people even used printed work.
When it came time to go over everyone’s work, it was dreadful. Jimmy had turned over everyone’s presentation boards and as he did that he said, “don’t hate me.” On the backsides of the presentation boards, there were the store labels left on, or there were names written on the back. No one had a presentable backside except for one student, Lorraine. She had made her own label and placed it on the bottom right corner on the back of her board. It was a typed up label with her name, email, and class information. Even the front side of her board was very nice and very presentable, all flat and no corners folding up. It was a good example of what we should all be doing for all our assignments, which is to make it look professional and presentable. Jimmy’s point was that if we were presenting/pitching our ideas to a client, our client would not find it amusing that there was still a sticker left on the backside of our work. The client would expect the best and cleanest presentation possible. They may be even looking for something flawless. Some students were chosen to present their boards. Jimmy wanted us to critique our classmates based on their body language. It’s interesting to learn about people’s body language because a lot of people usually lean towards shy or confident. I think there’s always going to be that factor of nervousness because you’re going in front of either a small or large crowd and all the attention is on you. I am always nervous when it’s time for me to present. I sometimes present strongly but most times I fumble and use “oatmeal” words as Andrew put it. Using words like, “umm” after almost each sentence. But what I try to be is confident about the work I did. It may be the crappiest work I’ve done but I still did it and should stand up for it. As I learned in class, it’s a good idea to always back up your work and be confident about it, to stand behind your work, either literally for figuratively. Don’t be too overly confident, but be confident enough in your work. Because if you’re not confident about it, then the client isn’t going to be confident about it and you may just lose that client for possible future projects.
What I’m learning about this class is that Jimmy doesn’t tell us to do a lot of things because he wants us to think about it first. For example, the way we should label our work. I also think this is why I think Jimmy likes to be vague about the way he describes our assignments. He wants us to in a sense, interpret it in our own way so that we have that flexibility to think creatively about the problem and find our own solution to the problem. I believe that yesterday’s class was a real test to see just how far we’d go to make a professional and presentable pitch.
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