Interning with Chris Conte (Week 2)

Hey! In this blog post, I’ll talk about what I have been doing during my internship at Vterative.

Play-Testing Sessions

One of the most important steps towards developing a great game is LOTS of product-testing. In the entertainment industry, this is referred to as play-testing. In addition to finding bugs, play-testing serves the purpose of redefining and fine-tuning video games. Depending on play-testers’ reactions and feedback, game designers may significantly alter gameplay and game design.

My first project as a Vteractive intern was to organize two play-testing sessions for our latest game, Questinations. Planning the sessions was relatively easy. I had to prepare a room within our office, buy drinks, prepare handouts, and provide a laptop. My boss helped me out with the first three tasks, and I made a note on my calendar reminding myself to bring my laptop. All that remained was finding play-testers.

My boss warned me that finding people willing to play-test a startup company’s game can be difficult. The task was made more difficult when I discovered that we could not bribe people with food or money, as that would likely bias their feedback. Another issue that I had to keep in mind was targeting play-testers representative of our game’s target market.

I posted a link to our play-testing sign up page on a few casual meet up groups and some local gaming-related websites including IGN and Pittsburgh LAN coalition. I also planned to give fliers to the Game Stop in Squirrel Hill. I got lucky twice.

My first stroke of luck was at Game Stop. I knew it would be against store policy for me to distribute the fliers, but I went inside anyway. After making sure it wasn’t busy, I explained the situation to the employees. They were very reasonable and agreed to help us out by distributing the fliers. Soon afterward, the Pittsburgh LAN coalition e-mailed my post to all their members, who then forwarded the relevant information to other gaming distribution lists.

Our first play-testing session was a huge success. We received tons of useful feedback for the game. After significantly updating the game, we held another play-testing session, from which we received a lot more useful feedback. All of the feedback has been documented, but updating Questinations has been put on hold while we work on a video game for our first client!

Fundraising

My first solitary project was fundraising. As most business students know, a common reason for small business failure is insufficient capital. I was assigned the important task of researching potential grants and investors for Vteractive. I started my search with key words such as “how to find funding.” Later, I searched different combinations of specific terms including: entertainment, technology, and Pittsburgh. After a few hours, I noticed decreasing returns from my searches, so I turned to some friends who closely follow entertainment technology. They directed me towards two grants, both an excellent fit for Vteractive. In the end, I compiled a list of 6 funding sources from which we could reasonably be awarded capital. I reviewed my results with Ken, who had done his own research. We had some overlap in our findings, and Ken was very pleased with the funding sources, two of which we decided to pursue.