Game Pitch Evalutation

Over the coming weeks, you will be creating at least three separate game pitches which you'll present to the class. This raises the question: what makes a good game pitch? 

In this assignment, you will review 50 publically available computer game pitches found on Steam Greenlight, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or other crowd funding or crowd voting game site. Based on an evaluation scheme you develop yourself, you will evaluate all 50 of these games. At the end, you'll submit your evaluation spreadsheet, and a Piazza post giving a list of your top 3 games, and your bottom 3 games (and why they're there). You'll also describe how well your game evaluation system worked in practice.

There are multiple goals for this assignment. You will develop a system for evaluating game pitches, then use it in earnest, and evaluate how well it worked. You will also develop the ability to quickly review and evaluate game pitches, otherwise this assignment will take forever. Ideallly you will also start to see patterns of things not to try in game pitches, and patterns in the kinds of ideas people are pitching. This, in turn, should help you to refine your understanding of what an original, novel game idea looks like.

Deliverables

For this assignment, you need to submit the following materials. Submission will be via Google Drive, in the form of a spreadsheet and one or more documents placed into a folder with your name, along with a post on Piazza.

Evaluation scheme: A document describing your evaluation scheme, which must contain at least five elements. For example, one element of an evaluation scheme might be a numerical assessment (1-5, 1 good, 5 bad) of a game's mechanics. Another element might be a short narrative description of the most interesting aspect of the game. Yet another might be a numerical score of a game's art direction.

It is expected that most evaluation schemes will involve a series of game aspects that will be evaluated on a numerical scale from 1 to 10. Such a scheme then easily supports the creation of a spreadsheet, where the games are rows, and the columns are evaluation criteria. This would permit easy recording of pitch evaluation criteria.

Numerical rating schemes might involve uneven weighting of the various elements. For example, art direction might count for a large fraction of your overall evaluation. If you have a weighting scheme, please describe it.

Each element of the evaluation scheme must be described, and this description must contain rationale for why it is a useful way to evaluate game pitches.

It is recommended that you view 5-10 game pitches before developing your evaluation scheme, as the things you see in these pitches will help inform your evaluation scheme.

Game evaluations: A spreadsheet or document containing an evaluation of each game pitch using your evaluation scheme. This document must contain one evaluation for each of the 50 of the game pitches you evaluated. It is not acceptable to group together pitches and evaluate them as a group. 

In addition to your evaluation criteria, please indicate on the spreadsheet/document where you found the game (e.g., Steam Greenlight), and if you voted in favor of the game (Steam Greenlight) or funded the game (Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or other crowdfunding site).

Final selection: A post to the Piazza thread titled, "Game Pitch Evaluation" containing a list of the best 3 games you evaluated, and the bottom 3 games, and 1-2 paragraphs of description as to why these games were good/bad. The description must reference back to the evaluation criteria used (e.g., "this game ranked consistently high on all of my evaluation criteria because...")

Evaluation of the evaluation scheme: A document (could be at the end of the evaluation scheme document) evaluating your evaluation scheme. That is, describe at least 2-3 aspects that worked well, or didn't work well, as you used your evaluation scheme to look at 75 game pitches.

Grading

The number of games evaluated sets a maximum score for the assignment, two points per game evaluated.

Of this maximum score, grades are based on:

Evaluation scheme (30%): evaluation scheme contains required number of elements, is described, and has solid rationale for elements included in the scheme.

Final selection (15%): a post was made to Piazza providing the top three games and bottom three games, along with a description of why they are selected. The paragraph of description provides a well reasoned explanation for the choice of these games, and the description refers back to the evaluation scheme used.

Evaluation of evaluation scheme (30%): a well reasoned critique is made of the evaluation scheme used. The evaluation contains at least 2 items that worked well, or didn't work well.

Game pitch evaluations (25%): games evaluated have complete evaluations, and the evaluations appear to correlate with the actual game pitch (i.e., evaluations do not appear to be cut and pasted and/or random numbers).

Time Estimate

This is a long assignment. Estimated time to complete is approximately 6 hours, broken down as 1 hour to develop the evaluation criteria, 4 hours to evaluate game pitches (at appx. 4-5 minutes per pitch), and 1 hour to pick the top three, evaluate the evaluation scheme, and post to Piazza.