Taking my Time

As you might have noticed I have been absent for more than a month now. No conclusion to the MGDC, no new one for March, no thoughts or idea’s… nothing. What happened to me?

I dare to state it is not laziness, or carelessness. I have been wanting to get on with the MGDC a lot, especially since I have some idea’s in my head about the strategic uses of a D6 in a non-chance environment. But that’s just how for it all gets this past month, in my head.

To blame is … well, to blame am I, for being so ambitious in our school project. I haven’t dropped a single word about it, so let me start at the beginning.

Half a year ago, my class was divided into three groups, and given the following assignment: “Make an interactive project, based on Hamlet, with the twist ‘Machine’ “ We set to work, quickly coming up with the idea of an interactive theatre-play. There would be an online pregame where people could get a place in the world of the play, and get to know the characters. The idea was that they could get things like phone numbers etc. from them, and consequently call the characters during the play, or endgame, to give them advise.

After three weeks the teachers rated the three projects, and found them to be much alike. We were merged into one group, 10 members, to spend the rest of the 6 months creating a project together. It ended up being a mess. No one wanted to take responsibility for such a thing, and big discussions hindered any progress in the concept for weeks.

We dragged ourselves out of that tar pit however, and developed as a group. A new concept started to take shape, and we were happy to present the big plan in December; A three-week pregame, wherein the player would get to know the characters (politicians) in our interactive version of Hamlet. The players would fulfill the role of Spin doctors, influencing the reputations of the politicians. These reputations would be taken to the Endgame, where the players would continue to influence the reputations during an interactive five-acter.

So far, so good. We enjoyed a break from the project during winter-school, and resumed the project end January. That’s when things went out of hands. The pre-game turned into an ARG, with almost no preparation we had to run a challenging game for 66 players. Suddenly I was working on the project 09:00 to 22:00 daily. The last days of the pre-game (last Thursday for example) I was working on the project till 03:00… Everything had to be shoved aside.

Was it really necessary? Well maybe not. Maybe I did put more effort into than was strictly needed. But this was such a superb chance to experiment and learn! And I have learned a lot.

This week we prepare for the endgame piece, which will take place Thursday night. I cannot give any spoilers yet, so I will save what I’ve learned and what exactly our project was all about for a later post.

Rik out.