Conference Cavalry Organizing IMGD Events During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Break In Case of a Global Crisis

Charles Baldwin, Mariko Endo, Matthew Johannesen, Sophia B. Marcus Advised by Prof. Dean O'Donnell

An Interactive Qualifying Project submitted to the Faculty of WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts

This report represents work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its web site without editorial or peer review. 1

Abstract

In a typical year, the Conference IQP organizes WPI’s booth presence at the PAX

East gaming convention and provides students with experience showcasing their game development work to the public. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting need to minimize close contact with one another, the focus was shifted towards planning and running the WPI IMGD program’s two major game showcase events, AlphaFest and ShowFest. Both of these events had to be thoroughly redesigned in order to run smoothly in an online setting. As part of this planning, our team devised methods to run virtual events over Discord, curated student submissions to the event, and gathered feedback from running AlphaFest to make ShowFest better.

This paper describes the goals, procedures, and results of our project, and provides a potential framework for running virtual events of this nature in the future. 2

Table of Contents

Abstract 1 Table of Contents 2 Table of Figures 4 Executive Summary 5 Introduction 6 About WPI IMGD 7 Brief Overview of Events 8 BostonFIG 8 AlphaFest 9 PAX East 10 ShowFest 11 About the Conference IQP 11 Events in the Pandemic 13 PAX East 2020 13 BostonFIG 2020 13 PAX Online 2020 16 AlphaFest 2020 17 ShowFest 2021 20 Introduction 20 Preparing for ShowFest 20 The Day Of ShowFest 25 After ShowFest 27 PAX East 2021 27 Game Curation in Most Years 28 Game Collection Process 28 Testing Games 29 Marketing 31 Game Curation During the Pandemic 32 New Conditions 32 Platform Consideration 33 Conclusion 36 3

Metrics for Success 36 Advice for Future Submissions 37 Final Thoughts 39 Acknowledgements 40 IMGD Faculty 40 Developer Interviewers 40 Boston Festival of Indie Games 40 Fellow Students 41

Bibliography 42 Appendix A: Email Correspondence 44 Item A1 - Request for promotional materials for each project shown in AlphaFest 44 Item A2 - Reminders to interviewers and attendees for ShowFest 45 Appendix B: Logos 47 Item B1 - Logos for ShowFest 47 Appendix C: Websites 48 Item C1 - AlphaFest Website 48 Item C2 - ShowFest Website 49 Appendix D: Promotional Materials 51 Item D1 - ShowFest Posters 51 Appendix E - Forms 53 Item E1 - Showfest Developer Information Form 53 Item E2 - MQP Submission Form 54 4

Table of Figures

Figure 1 - The WPI booth at BostonFIG 2019 8

Figure 2 - AlphaFest 2019 9

Figure 3 - The virtual BostonFIG Fest 2020 show foor 14

Figure 4 - The PAX Online 2020 “Digital Show Floor” 16

Figure 5 - Discord channels set up for each group 18

Figure 6 - The overlay for the Twitch stream. 23

Figure 7 - Participants playing the MQP game Factory Reset in one of the Discord rooms. 26

Figure 8 - Participants playing the MQP game Buried Voices in one of the Discord rooms. 26 5

Executive Summary

The primary focus of this paper is documenting our work as part of the

Conference IQP towards organizing online events for the IMGD program at WPI during the COVID-19 pandemic. This IQP is an annually recurring project, and in previous years its main goal was to curate and maintain WPI’s booth presence at the PAX East gaming convention. This was done to expose student work to the greater game development community. Because of the pandemic, such events were not possible, and our IQP had to shift focus. We pivoted to instead plan and run two events that are usually organized by the IMGD faculty, AlphaFest and ShowFest. Because these events had to be run virtually, new methods had to be devised to ensure that they ran smoothly and provided as similar of an experience to normal years’ events as possible.

The main steps we took included planning how the events would function, curating project submissions from students, and creating a virtual space on Discord for the event to take place in. There were also other responsibilities that arose from these main tasks, which included creating marketing material, building a website to host projects, assisting students with project submission technicalities, and live streaming interviews between students and industry professionals.

In this paper, we frst explain in depth the IMGD department as a whole, and the various events we were tasked with handling as they would happen in a normal year. 6

After that, we explain the differences between how these events are supposed to be run, and how they changed in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. This section also describes our general methodology for planning the events that we did end up running. Next, we go over our process for collecting and testing student games as preparation for both AlphaFest and ShowFest. Lastly, we acknowledge the help we received along the way and refect on the results of our project, as well as provide advice for future virtual events, should it be necessary in the future. 7

Introduction

About WPI IMGD

WPI’s Interactive Media and Game Development major (IMGD) is one of the foremost degree programs in the USA.1 The program covers all aspects of game development, from programming to art to design, and everything in between. No matter what specifc concentration students pursue, the program ensures a breadth of instruction that spans each discipline. IMGD graduates often go on to work at world-renowned game development studios.

One of the major capstones of the degree is the Major Qualifying Project (MQP), where fourth-year students work on a project that is a culmination of their hard work over the course of the previous three years. In the case of IMGD students, MQPs usually take the form of a polished game, interactive experience, or development tool designed and developed by students. Like the game industry, IMGD projects are heavily interdisciplinary, with each team maintaining a balance of artistic and technical skill. Students must collaborate closely with one another to make sure that their work fts with the project concept and overall scope

To support students' development work (including MQPs), the IMGD department hosts two exhibitions each year: AlphaFest, where students showcase

1 "Spotlight on 6 Top Video Game Design Schools." The Princeton Review. http://www.princetonreview.com/college-advice/game-design/spotlight-on-video-game-design-schools. 8 their in-progress projects for testing and critique, and ShowFest, where teams display more polished and complete versions of their projects.

Brief Overview of Events

The following is a list of the primary events attended by student game development teams, in order of when they typically occur within a school year. This section describes the events as they would normally happen in a pandemic-free year.

BostonFIG

The Boston Festival of Indie

Games, better known as BostonFIG or

BFIG, is an annual event in Cambridge,

MA where independent developers of video and tabletop games meet to showcase their titles.2 In the past,

BostonFIG was a combination of game showcases on the foor combined with live talks from industry professionals, but in recent years those components have been separated into two events, BostonFIG Fest and BostonFIG Talks. BostonFIG Fest is the event this project was primarily concerned with, so further mentions of BostonFIG and

BFIG are in reference to the Fest specifcally. BostonFIG usually runs a series of awards

2 "About BostonFIG." BostonFIG. https://www.bostonfig.com/about/. 9 for the best games in different categories, which are announced at a show at the end of the event. These awards are decided by judges, but there is also an award that is decided by event attendees, who are given a few tickets that they can use to vote for their favorite games. To curate games, BostonFIG has had two main paths open for developers to pursue. The developers of a game could submit their game to BostonFIG for a set of judges to review, and they would select the best games to get a free table to showcase at the event. Alternatively, developers could pay a fat fee to get a table, circumventing the judging process.3 BostonFIG typically occurs in the Fall, during A

Term.

AlphaFest

AlphaFest is an annual event put on by the IMGD department to showcase any work-in-progress or complete projects students are working on. The kinds of projects that are shown at AlphaFest typically include games, movies, and books, but there are no explicit requirements on the type of media.

3 "About BostonFIG" 10

All students are welcome to submit their work, but students working on MQPs that year are required to showcase an early version of their projects (“alpha” versions, as the event’s name suggests) in order to gather feedback from users. Students can then use this feedback to further develop and improve their projects. AlphaFest is typically held in the Fall, towards the end of B Term.

PAX East

PAX is a series of world-famous gaming conventions, with PAX East being the event hosted in Boston. PAX is a celebration of gaming culture, with blockbuster and indie game studios showcasing their new and upcoming games. PAX originally stood for Penny Arcade Expo, an event started by the creators of the Penny Arcade webcomic. Unlike the major games industry events E3 and GDC, which have been primarily focused on professionals and games journalists, PAX has been open to the public since its inception. The frst event took place in 2004 in Bellevue, Washington, which remained the only PAX location for six years. In 2010 the frst PAX East was held, and the Washington-based event was renamed to PAX Prime to re-establish it as the main event. PAX East would quickly become much more popular than PAX Prime, though - and as new PAX events were started, such as PAX South in San Antonio,

Texas and PAX Australia in Melbourne, PAX Prime was renamed to PAX West to retire 11 its identity as the most signifcant PAX event.4 PAX East typically takes place in the

Spring, either at the end of WPI’s C Term or the start of D Term.

ShowFest

ShowFest is another event hosted by the IMGD department, where students display complete and polished projects they have developed throughout the year to the public. Like AlphaFest, students who have been working on an IMGD-related MQP are required to submit their projects to the event to get feedback from playtesters - but in this instance, the projects are expected to be close to their fnal iterations. In addition to the open project exhibition, ShowFest is also accompanied by a live broadcast where

MQP teams are interviewed by game industry professionals. This gives seniors an opportunity to speak with fellow industry members as they transition into the workforce after commencement. ShowFest is held towards the end of D Term to give students ample time to complete their projects.

About the Conference IQP

Historically, the purpose of the Conference IQP has been to plan and facilitate

WPI’s presence at BostonFIG and PAX East. This includes curating student projects and coordinating event logistics before each event, and managing WPI’s booth during the events. Typically, WPI uses the booth to showcase student projects, exposing their

4 "PAX Hub Home." History. May 14, 2020 http://www.paxsite.com/history. 12 work to the greater game development community, and providing an early opportunity for networking with professionals.

In addition to representing WPI and the IMGD program, this IQP also gives students concrete experience with public engagement at conventions. Being able to talk to visitors about games on display, encourage them to play for a while, and take feedback afterward is a highly valued skill in the game industry, where showing work at conventions is extremely common. 13

Events in the Pandemic

PAX East 2020

PAX East 2020 took place from February 27th to March 1st, just before much of the U.S. entered a lockdown due to COVID-19, but in response to news that the virus was spreading in the country, many attendees (including the previous Convention IQP team) took safety precautions. While mask mandates were not yet in effect, many PAX attendees made sure to make regular use of hand sanitizer to mitigate the potential spread of the virus. It was very soon after this event that COVID-19 started to expand quickly across the U.S., and events like PAX would no longer be possible with mask and social distancing policies in place.

BostonFIG 2020

In previous years, BostonFIG was the frst event on the IMGD events calendar; however, due to the prolonged lockdowns across the U.S. and uncertainty over alternate convention options, the event was offcially postponed on May 15th.5

After several months of little news, the BostonFIG organizers announced on

November 18th, 2020 that the event had been revived, in the form of an online conference, and would take place on January 16th, 2021. The event would be split into

5 BostonFIG. “BostonFIG Fest won't be taking place in-person this year. All tickets and fees will be refunded.” Twitter. http://pic.twitter.com/X3VlsNq79o. 14 three simultaneous segments, on separate online platforms: a virtual show foor via

Gather (see Fig. 3),6 a Twitch livestream of

developer interviews, and a public

message board on Discord for visitors and

developers alike.

Given the shorter time frame for

submitting games, the removal of

expensive exhibition fees, and the fact that the new event date fell within WPI’s winter break, we decided that it would not be worthwhile to gather student games and submit them via a WPI booth. Instead, we simply opted to inform students in the IMGD program of the opportunity, so they could apply on their own time if they wished.

Ultimately, however, no one from WPI submitted their work to BFIG. We did not offcially determine reasons for this, but the combination of fatigue from remote courses and a dramatically shortened break during the Fall semester meant that most students were either too exhausted or busy to prepare a submission.

Though we were not representing WPI at BFIG, some of us also attended the virtual show foor to see how Gather, the web service hosting the event, worked.

6 Elvie Mae Parian. "Digital Spaces for Digital Games: How BostonFIG Fest Virtual 2020 Brought a Show Online." Sidequest. February 06, 2021. http://sidequest.zone/2021/02/08/digital-spaces-for-digital-games. 15

Based on demonstration videos we had seen months before, Gather appeared to have all the same features as the Discord server we used for AlphaFest but with one signifcant difference: rather than providing event content through a list of links, links in a Gather event have locations in a two-dimensional virtual space. Visitors each control an avatar in this event space, and as they “walk” by a point of interest, Gather will prompt visitors to open documents, visit webpages, or even chat with nearby users. To a small degree, this recreates the sense of walking around a physical space - something that was sorely missed in our implementation of AlphaFest, and that we wanted to try incorporating for ShowFest later in the year.

Unfortunately, those of us that visited BFIG virtually were sorely disappointed.

As we moved our avatars around, Gather continuously attempted to initiate a video call with users around us - and end them as we got further away - causing our computers and internet connections to slow down signifcantly. Furthermore, at least one of our avatars was repeatedly ejected and placed back at the event’s starting area, making the experience largely unusable. Contrary to our own experiences, many attendees reported a largely positive experience on social media after the event - but since we valued accessibility and stability for our events above all else, we realize that such a wide variety of visitor outcomes was too large to be reasonable for ShowFest. Thus, we decided against pursuing Gather any further as an option. 16

PAX Online 2020

While PAX East 2020 occurred just before lockdowns began in the US, most other

PAX events had to be cancelled for safety. In a swift effort to provide an alternative, the PAX event organizers created a new virtual experience called PAX Online 2020 (see Fig.

4).7 However, perhaps due to the shorter time frame in which it was set up, there was little information available on how to be an exhibitor - and in the case of WPI, we were unsure of whether schools could exhibit student games at all. In addition to a lack of published submission materials, most of the emails we sent to PAX were met with silence - so we had minimal information to take action from.

All that we could deduce was that the event was going to be hosted on Steam, a major game marketplace and distribution platform. Since it was required for exhibitors to have their games already approved by and listed on Steam (a notoriously long and labor-intensive process), the event strongly favored well-known publishers, indie organizers, and developers over students and lesser-known developers. This indicated to us that for our own events, we needed to make the submission process as

7 "Home." PAX Online X EGX Digital. http://www.paxegx.com/. 17 simple and straightforward as possible so students could enter without much additional work.

AlphaFest 2020

As we found out that events like PAX East and BostonFIG Fest would not be happening this year due to the pandemic, at least in a form that the Conference IQP would be able to work with, it became clear that we would need to pivot our focus and set new goals and objectives. The frst of these objectives was to run the virtual version of AlphaFest. Normally this is run mostly by IMGD faculty, but the fact that it needed to be conducted online turned it into a problem that could be solved with our skill sets.

We assessed various options for what platform to run the event on and ultimately settled on Discord, over more typical applications like Zoom. Discord is an online messaging app that features voice and video chat, with a focus on communities known as ‘servers’.8 We chose Discord for a variety of reasons: most students already have it and use it frequently, it supports screen-sharing so developers can watch playtesters interact with their projects, and it allows for easy switching between chat rooms so playtesters can seamlessly move from one game to the next. Zoom does have these features to an extent, but they are comparatively poorly-executed and not

8 Delfino, Devon. "What Is Discord? A Guide to the Popular Group-chatting App." Business Insider. March 24, 2021. http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-discord. 18 user friendly, which would make the event much more diffcult to run.

When setting up the event, we worked with the students who run the offcial IMGD Discord server to get the space ready for hosting. We created a series of channels on the server, which included one text chat channel and two voice chat channels for each individual project (see Fig. 5). This setup gave those showcasing the necessary space to post links to downloadable fles and questionnaires, communicate with playtesters, and monitor user’s interactions with their projects. It also allowed the IQP team to keep the server neatly organized by minimizing clutter and interference between different projects.

In addition to the live portion on Discord, we also set up a website with event information and download links for all the projects.9 This served as a central resource for the event, and allowed for different ways of participating: those who had the time and adequate internet speed to join on Discord would not have to search through cluttered messages for information, and those who were unable to engage live could access the projects on their own time.

9 Endo, Mariko, and Mikel Matticoli. Website Help. Personal, September 10, 2020. 19

To ensure AlphaFest would be well-attended, we ran a fairly strong marketing campaign leading up to the event. This mostly entailed sending occasional messages in both the IMGD Discord server, where the event was to be held, as well as email updates sent to all IMGD students and staff (see Appendix A). Announcements always included links to the website and basic information about the event logistics so that there would be minimal confusion about how to participate. 20

ShowFest 2021

Introduction

As noted previously, ShowFest is similar to AlphaFest in format but introduces a new component: a live streamed series of interviews in which games industry professionals discuss MQP projects with the students who worked on them. Due to the success of the two-part structure that we utilized in AlphaFest, we were able to borrow the previous setup, allowing us to allocate more attention towards the interview segment.

Preparing for ShowFest

There were several weeks of trial and error that took place before we could confdently broadcast the event. The two major issues we encountered while planning the livestream were organizing the interviewers and interviewees, as well as creating the proper branding, animations, and overlays (see Appendix B, Fig 6). Months before planning the event itself, it was imperative that we fnd industry professionals to conduct the interviews. Of the 28 that we contacted, 12 were willing to become panelists. We also took inventory on how many student projects were slated to be interviewed at ShowFest. In order to ensure we had accurate numbers, we referenced both the MQP list and the Graduate Projects list to fnd their overall sum. We needed 21 to make sure the event would not go over our allotted three hours, and made the decision to focus interviews on MQPs, due to the large total of projects available.

Once we had our fnalized list of developers and MQPs, we assigned tags to each project based on what their work specialized in. This included categories such as

Technology, Art, Writing, and Audio. As we continued to pair projects and developers, we distributed a form to all panelists asking them to give us their name, a picture for their profle, and a short biography that summarized their time in the game industry.

Once we received all the needed responses, we matched panelists with the MQPs that best ft their interests. After fnalizing pairings, we drafted a concise interview schedule, complete with timed brackets. Lastly, we distributed forms to students in order to collect the necessary information to both debrief the panelists, and allow them to play the game (see Appendix E). The form requested details such as: the project’s name, a small synopsis, all their team members, a link to their trailer, and a link to their project.

As we approached ShowFest, we encountered various issues, ranging anywhere from logistical to technological. While panelists prepared to play student projects, we began to receive multiple emails from MQPs, stating that they would not be attending

ShowFest, or were unaware of what the event entailed. This led to several projects dropping out of the event, shrinking our original total of 18 projects down to a mere

12. This posed problems as we communicated in advance that panelists were to 22 interview 3 projects, a number which was now reduced to 2. Several corrections had to be made due to the magnitude of last minute project withdrawals that took place.

Once we were able to identify which projects were submitting to ShowFest, we compiled their project information and download links into a singular PDF that we sent to developers, allowing them a few days to try out student projects and come up with questions and conversation starters for the interview to follow.

In the days leading up to the event, there were a few technical hurdles we needed to overcome in order to ensure the event ran smoothly. Some of the developers we contacted for interviews only had a Mac computer available, so the games they were to play needed to have a specially made Mac version compiled and sent to them.

Unfortunately, most game engines do not support creating games for a Mac unless the development work is done using a Mac or the developer buys a license to do so from other computers. Since a majority of the student body uses Windows computers, their projects typically do not work on Mac OS devices. As a result, one of our team members used their own Mac computer to compile the necessary projects. This process was more complicated than we had expected; we found many diffculties trying to build games on Mac, especially for the games built with Unreal Engine,10 but ultimately we achieved the results we were looking for. Upon further refection, we could have avoided this extra work by simply seeking out students who already did

10 “Packaging Projects.” Unreal Engine Documentation. Epic Games. Accessed May 14, 2021. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Basics/Projects/Packaging/index.html. 23 development work on a MacOS device, and pairing them with ShowFest interviewers who only have access to a Mac.

While we reached out to interview participants, we also developed a structure for the live stream itself. We decided to host it on Twitch, a popular streaming platform with strong ties to the gaming community, as some of us had experience working with it. Our primary consideration was to create a professional environment for the interview segments. In order to improve upon last year’s

ShowFest, which streamed the Zoom window, and required the showrunner to move on screen assets around manually on his screen. We altered our approach by creating overlays and different scenes he could cut to in order to adapt to the situation at hand (see Fig. 6).11

This method ensured that scenes, text, and imagery could transition smoothly. We also created an animated video clip to play as an introduction to the stream. To create it, we built a 3D model of our logo for ShowFest (see Appendix B) using the software package Blender 2.9, then used Autodesk Maya 2020 to animate it moving across the

11 Love, S., D. Ribaudo, R. Sallie “Dyadic Unity.” IMGD ShowFest 2021, May 7, 2021. https://wp.wpi.edu/showfest/project/dyadic-unity/. 24 screen,12 and fnally composited everything together in Adobe Premiere CC.13 To add an additional layer to the intro, we commissioned Professor Keith Zizza, who teaches audio and music courses for the IMGD program, to compose a musical jingle to play during breaks and transitions in the stream.14

Despite the countermeasures, we still faced diffculty during implementation.

Initially, we had multiple setups and overlays to account for a varied number of participants. Upon implementation, we discovered that our wide variation of overlays was the root cause of many of our complications. Our original setup was created to cover up the Zoom user interface by only allowing for 2 to 4 people to be shown in the

Zoom call at once - straying from this format would cause a lack of visual cohesion.15 In order to combat this, we decided to make the interviews a simple display capture, with branding and overlays surrounding it, opting to show the Zoom user interface. This removed any restriction on the number of interviewees we could host at any time. To further simplify things, we created a system that allowed the audio to be silenced when going to intermission, a safety net in case we ran into any technical issues and needed to cut away.16

12 Your Animation Playblasts Can Look Like Renders! YouTube. YouTube, May 26, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=890_yXk7NZg&ab_channel=SirWadeNeistadt. 13 Lindgren, David. “How to Free Transform in Premiere Pro.” YouTube. YouTube, December 12, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdtFxDP1KOM&ab_channel=DavidLindgren. 14 Zizza, Keith. ShowFest Jingle. Personal, March 23, 2021. 15 Use Zoom to Host a Talk Show + Free Overlay Files. YouTube. YouTube, July 8, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0J7scoAo60&ab_channel=StreamGeeks. 16 Scene Specific Audio Sources in OBS. YouTube. YouTube, May 26, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsi7YTNsjBs&ab_channel=Lockhinator. 25

The Day Of ShowFest

The event itself ran relatively smoothly, and most issues we encountered were inconsequential due to the many safeguards we had in place. The most signifcant issue we faced was confusion about the livestream schedule; some interviewers believed that their time slot with their corresponding student teams would be later than was scheduled, and earlier in the day a student project dropped out. As we were unable to easily contact the interviewers on such short notice, we had to add an impromptu intermission period.

Additionally, we encountered issues with the process of getting panelists and

MQP students ready to enter the livestream. In particular, the virtual “waiting room” we were using on Zoom to queue up stream participants could be bypassed completely if a user’s Zoom account was attached to their WPI email address. This meant that anyone from WPI who entered the Zoom call would immediately be injected into the current interview segment, potentially distracting from the discussion.

As a countermeasure, we applied a setting to hide the names of any users with their devices’ camera disabled; however, anyone that skipped the waiting room and had a camera enabled would still be revealed on the screen. This situation necessitated an emergency email to all the MQP students to keep their cameras and microphones disabled when entering the call. While these interjections were not common or troublesome, it could have been avoided with some more secure setup beforehand. 26

Alongside the livestream on Twitch, we also facilitated the Discord portion of the event (see Figs. 7 and 8).17 18 The structure of our Discord server was very similar to that of AlphaFest earlier in the year, and those who had attended that event were immediately familiar with where to chat with each other and student teams. While we did actively monitor the message boards and virtual conference rooms provided for each project, the participants largely moderated their own behavior and were able to fnd resources they were looking for.

17 Dolan, R., C. O. Adler, E. Kirschner, H. Stadolnik Factory Reset. Accessed May 14, 2021. https://users.wpi.edu/~rfdolan/Factory-Reset/index.html. 18 Matticoli, M., E. Lowry, D. Kumykova, I. M.Shulman, O. Bogs. Buried Voices Accessed May 14, 2021. https://buriedvoices.github.io/. 27

After ShowFest

Ultimately, we believe that ShowFest was a success. The live stream process only had a few, very small hiccups, and all the developers and MQP students had interesting conversations about their projects. We attracted a sizable audience, with a maximum amount of 57 viewers and an average of 46 viewers. In the days following

ShowFest, we had a short fnal debrief meeting and arranged to send the interviewers small gifts in appreciation of their time.

PAX East 2021

While the PAX East organizers had indicated their plans to hold the event in the summer of 2021, the continued situation with COVID-19 ultimately forced them to change their plans. PAX East 2021 is now planned to be held online from June 3-6. As this falls outside the date range of the WPI school year, we did not make any plans to organize a submission for this event. 28

Game Curation in Most Years

Game Collection Process

As noted before, one of the Conference IQP group’s usual responsibilities is selecting student-made games to display at public events. In addition to representing

WPI and the IMGD program, this also provides a great way for students to bring their games to a much wider audience than they could on their own. It can be hard for a small team of students to justify the costs of reserving their own convention booth - so many would not even consider exhibiting at larger events. Since the WPI booth is paid for every year by the IMGD program, though, students whose games are selected for display can attend conventions without the fnancial burden.

Leading up to the various events where WPI is represented, the Conference IQP team runs a selection process to pare down the number of games being shown. In most years, the frst consideration is the number of games to bring. For ease of maintenance, the WPI booth usually has one game per computer - and because the computer monitors take up most of the available table space, the number of games we can show is limited by the size of the booth WPI has been assigned. In most cases, we are able to ft two or three games comfortably in one space.

Furthermore, we usually try to incorporate at least one MQP game as an example of WPI coursework, and one virtual reality game (if the booth is large enough 29 for someone to stand and move around) to attract crowds. Games that are easy to pick up and play are also favorable, as most event attendees are not interested in spending more than a few minutes playing a game.

With these factors in mind, the students involved with this IQP begin to collect information via email about teams interested in exhibiting. This initial submission period lasts for around one week, and is mostly advertised through mailing lists for

IMGD students and adjacent programs - but as students have congregated in other unoffcial online communities over the years, reminders have been sent there as well.

In their applications, potential entrants are asked to send their basic information, including team member names and submission details. This information is compiled into a spreadsheet to get a sense of what kinds of projects will be submitted later.

Then, as a given event draws closer, a request for the actual project materials - including game executables, movie fles, instructions, etc. - is sent out to the short list of teams from the spreadsheet.

Testing Games

As project materials arrive, the IQP team needs to make sure that each intended experience is functional for visitors who want to try it. When everything works reasonably well, visitors have an enjoyable time and developers/designers can get much higher-quality feedback on their projects. While it was mostly up to the 30 developers themselves to solve any problems with their work beforehand, event organizers also have to take some responsibility and ensure that everything on display is presented cohesively for the event.

Most projects the IQP team receives are games designed for Windows computers. Developing software for Windows is free and widely supported by many software packages, so it is a natural choice for students who want to make their games playable in as little time as possible. Testing these projects usually involves downloading and running an executable, or “build” - a compressed package of all the game’s fles, that can be launched without requiring other software to be installed.

Testing these is relatively straightforward, as every person on the IQP team typically has access to many different computers to run them on. Once the reviewers have been able to spend a few minutes running the executable and playing the game, they will get in touch with the developers again to inform them of any serious problems they encountered.

Applications meant for other devices, such as MacOS computers, mobile devices, or even mixed reality headsets, are generally more diffcult and expensive to create, and are less common for the IQP team to encounter as a result. In these cases, the developers must take even more care while checking their work, as only those with the relevant computer setup would be able to run their executable. 31

Marketing

In terms of marketing, we were able to approach the situation with a clear course of action. We created posters and logos to brand each event — creating a distinct look for both AlphaFest and ShowFest. Posters were made in Adobe InDesign with careful attention to the print-to-web conversion, and featured necessary information while also maintaining legibility.19 These posters were then placed onto the respective event’s sites, and fnally, both were promoted through mailing lists and

Discord announcements (see Appendices B and D for examples).

19 Endo, Mariko, and Roshanak Bigonah. Visual Poster Design. Personal, 2019. 32

Game Curation During the Pandemic

New Conditions

As noted previously, the COVID-19 pandemic meant that all events and gatherings had to be conducted online. While this allowed us to remove the limit on exhibitors at our events (as there was no longer a concern of ftting people and computers into a physical space), it also meant that projects on display would have to run on visitors’ computers, not just the exhibitors’. This was a major change from previous years: normally, a developer showcasing their work at an event would only have to make their project function properly on one computer - whether their own, or one provided by WPI - and could presumably buy or borrow more powerful hardware if their own devices were not able to run an application effectively. A visitor to such an event never needs to care about the hardware involved - they are free to just walk up to a table with a game and play it.

In this new scenario, however, visitors carry a much more signifcant burden of hardware requirements. Because games and other projects needed to be played on the visitor’s own computer or streamed over an Internet connection, the attendees’ experiences are entirely dependent on the hardware they own, and could vary widely.

This meant that in order to make the event and projects accessible to everyone, we had 33 to work more closely with developers and ensure that there would be something for all attendees to try.

Platform Consideration

Aside from computer storage, graphics capability, and Internet connection, we determined that the most signifcant obstacle to event attendees in accessing projects would be their operating system. Applications for devices running on Windows, Mac

OS, Android, or iOS are not compatible with other systems, and student teams typically pick just one to develop for. This is usually not an issue, as developers often bring their own devices to events for showing a project - but since games now had to be downloaded by individual attendees, the number of projects available to each user was restricted.

As most projects submitted are made for desktop or laptop computers, we frst narrowed our focus to the split between Windows and Mac devices. Ideally, we wanted to provide these projects in forms that were compatible to each - but because a developer has to have a Mac to create apps for the platform, this was simply not possible for some teams who did not have one or were using Windows-only software.

While this was ultimately not detrimental, we knew there would be enough attendees who only had Mac devices to warrant creating compatible versions of some projects. 34

One of our own team members did have a Mac available, however, so we were able to convert a small number of projects for teams who could not do it themselves.

This split was also true for mobile applications. While developing for Android devices is free and does not require a fee and is set up with free tools, creating an application for iOS devices is only possible if the developer uses a Mac and obtains an expensive license from Apple. Furthermore, since iOS devices cannot run applications that did not come from Apple’s offcial App Store, students would need to wait up to two weeks for their project to be reviewed before anyone could try it on their own devices. With these barriers to development, most project teams avoid making their work available for iOS devices at all, and instead opt to make their game or experience run on a Windows device. While this made it much easier for people to download their game, it lacked the real mobile user experience which may have skewed some of the playtest experiences.

The fnal hardware setup we had to account for was virtual reality (VR) headsets. Since the technology is still in its early iterations from a consumer standpoint, VR devices are a popular platform for at least one team to develop for - but most attendees do not own a headset. This is usually not an issue, as developers do often have one to test with and bring it to events - but because all event participants are attending from home, VR applications will only be accessible to the small portion that own the correct hardware. We ultimately did not have many VR-related 35 submissions this year, and those that were intended for VR were provided as standard

Windows applications without the need for additional equipment. 36

Conclusion

Metrics for Success

To gauge our success with pivoting to solely online events this year, we focused on three qualitative goals for each event experience:

● Creating a social and friendly environment

● Making the platforms we chose accessible and approachable to attendees

● Providing guidelines for developers on how to share their work and engage

audiences

We believe that the Discord setup we utilized for both AlphaFest and ShowFest created a sense of community and social camaraderie. With the freedom to choose whether they shared their screen with everyone else while interacting with each project, or simply observed others doing so, attendees were able to participate at their own comfortable pace. This arrangement also meant developers of each project could easily interact with audiences in real time, allowing for constructive and complimentary commentary alongside the stream. Lastly, the fact that we could provide a dedicated message board and meeting rooms to each project meant that discussions about different topics did not have to be compacted into a single, hard-to-follow conversation. 37

To ensure that no attendees or exhibitors were confused about how to participate in our events, we created several guides for the event website detailing how to download the available projects and use Discord’s various features(see

Appendix C). Each guide was accompanied by a visual indicator of where to click to accurately use the application. With these in place, we and other event attendees were able to quickly direct those who had never used Discord to our site for information.

Throughout the event planning process, we worked continuously to help student developers. In addition to make sure they had working project fles in convenient formats for event attendees, we also created a set of guidelines to help developers get a more meaningful experience out of the events. We encouraged teams to be courteous and maintain a team representative in their channel, so that attendees would always be able to ask questions or play a game while the developer watched. In our experience, all exhibitors understood the value of these guidelines and received much more feedback by being present at their virtual booths.

Advice for Future Submissions

While we hope that our experience hosting IMGD events online amidst a global pandemic will not need to be referenced anytime soon, we must acknowledge that our work has shown it is feasible to do so while preserving the sense of community that is central to in-person gatherings. In the event that some or all interested participants 38 cannot physically attend an event, our two-part model of an interactive, real-time portion and a central informational website can serve as a framework for events in years to come.

In receiving student project submissions, we highly recommend that future IQP teams automate the process as much as possible. Sending fles and project information to the organizers’ email address is simple for students to do, but retrieving the contents of each message separately is tedious and labor-intensive. Instead, create an online form for students to fll out; this will essentially be the same submission format from the students’ point of view, but many form creation tools allow for submissions to be compiled into a single spreadsheet. Data in a spreadsheet can then be sorted and referenced very easily, making it much simpler to organize event schedules and layouts as necessary.

With respect to managing MQP submissions for ShowFest, it is also essential to confrm with each team’s advisors whether or not the students will be interviewed. Not knowing that some MQP students did not need to have an interview was a signifcant source of confusion for ourselves, the interviewers, and MQP teams as well. Taking note of these details well in advance will prevent frequent schedule corrections leading up to the event. 39

Final Thoughts

Overall, we achieved many of the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of this IQP. Despite the various challenges that arose from changing the typical event schedule to a completely online format, we organized, and ran two successful showcases of work from the WPI community. Our team analyzed previous examples of well received online events, curated an experience for our community, and gained valuable knowledge in regards to running events with large user engagement.

Again, it is our hope that future teams working on this project will not face the same predicament as us - but if they should have to, may this paper serve as a guide for handling virtual events during a global pandemic. 40

Acknowledgements

IMGD Faculty

We are greatly appreciative of the faculty in WPI’s IMGD department, many of whom provided direct support to our event organization efforts this year. In particular, we are grateful for our project advisor, Dean O’Donnell, who continued to guide us despite the unfamiliar and unforgiving conditions that the COVID-19 pandemic presented us with. In addition to this we would like to acknowledge Jennifer deWinter,

Farley J Chery, Roshanak Bigonah, and Gillian Smith for their advice and guidance.

We’d also like to thank Keith Zizza for providing the jingle we used during the

ShowFest livestream.

Developer Interviewers

We’d like to thank the following developers for taking the time to participate in

ShowFest and make the event a reality: Kate Olguin, Leo Bunyea, Ziba Scott, Ichiro

Lambe, Tom Farro, Kelly Zhang, Chris Maire, Sam Luangkhot, Adam Schneider, Isaac

Donkoh-Halm, Ben Schneider, and Meaghan Glynn.

Boston Festival of Indie Games

While we decided against representing WPI at their event this year, we commend the Boston Festival of Indie Games organizers for consistently providing a 41 welcoming and organized space for local independent game developers to exhibit their work.

Fellow Students

Finally, we would like to thank those in the student body who dedicated their time to helping us craft a wonderful community experience. Those students include:

Mikel Matticoli, Diana Kumykova, Henry Stadolnik, Lyra Layne, Yaseen Nagib, and

Garrett Sheehan. 42

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Appendix A: Email Correspondence

Item A1 - Request for promotional materials for each project shown in

AlphaFest 45

Item A2 - Reminders to interviewers and attendees for ShowFest 46 47

Appendix B: Logos

Item B1 - Logos for ShowFest 48

Appendix C: Websites

Item C1 - AlphaFest Website 49

Item C2 - ShowFest Website 50 51

Appendix D: Promotional Materials

Item D1 - ShowFest Posters 52 53

Appendix E - Forms

Item E1 - Showfest Developer Information Form 54

Item E2 - MQP Submission Form