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Student Game Postmortem - Chase the Chicken
Beth A. Dillon writes "The CMP Game Career Guide website for aspiring developers and game students has been launched, with several useful resources available to people wanting an in to the games industry. As an inspiration, the Student Postmortem: Chase the Chicken details what went right and wrong for an Art Institute of Vancouver project." From the article: "In Chase the Chicken, players assume the role of Chase, the frantic chicken, who narrowly escapes the blade of an oversized and over-zealous Chef. What follows is a ridiculously chaotic pursuit through a South American village with Chef and fanatical villagers clipping at Chase's tail-feathers. Inspired loosely by the opening sequence in the film City of God (Miramax, 2002), the idea was a bit of a tough sell to a team of students... but that's a topic for later."
I don't want to know what you're going to do when you get there.
The enemies of Democracy are
This is hardly unique. Chicken chases (or chase the chicken) games go on regularly in rovers (see scouting) in Australia and many other groups also play similar games and have done since I was a child (at least fifteen years ago when I was five :P). The rules are slightly different but the concept is the same...Some one dressed as a chicken runs from a group chasing and those after it can use any means possible to track it down including feather trails, asking the people about, and getting the police to assist them. These chases are usually done in highly populated areas for extra laughs.
I ate your fish.
I recently graduated from an art school and at one point was the lead of a similar game collaborative (although we had no programmers...so we had to just create a 3D "animatic" with the art assets). For any students in a similar situation, take this golden rule to heart. Prepare for the majority of your team to slack. Especially if it is an in-class collaborative (What I mean is...no one had to "apply" or "try out" to join the project...they just registered for the class and were plopped into the project). When a passing grade is all that people want, the bare minimum is all you'll be lucky to get out of them.
For those that slack during these projects...don't. The guys/gals that end up with a sleepless semester because they are modeling/uv'ing/texturing/rigging your art assets, while you partied every night, may end up on the employee side of the table during one of your job interviews.
Props to the Chase the Chicken folks for having something playable...some of us fail to get that far... ;)