Bright spark apprentice chloe KACPERSKI week 4

Chloe Kacperski

Week 4:
Being over half way into the internship the schedule has become really familiar and even with some technical issues affecting testing, the week has flown by.

We started the week as usual with the product café session. Even though these sessions have been going on since the start of the project, it’s incredible to see what new suggestions arise to improve the game. Simple things like using one of the characters to notify the player of app “maintenance”, rather than an update message from Fictioneers as it feels more immersive within the story world. Even elements of the app that would be considered finished are still being critiqued and tweaked, so that the user has the best experience when they get the final product. I was confident enough to bring up a few suggestions, such as how a certain area of experience isn’t being frequently used and that its intention doesn’t feel clear within the game right now. We discussed how this area is still a big work in progress in the app, so it’s exciting to how it will develop when more content is added and if this will give it a clear intention.
The timeline got reset on Tuesday, so we all had a new build to play through. But along with this update were a few major bugs… The team had hoped to run through the whole story, from start to finish, specifically so we could follow the story flow and test later parts of the game, which haven’t had much previous testing, in more detail. The scale of some of the bugs meant that the timeline would have to be reset again later in the week in order to fix them. I was really surprised by how unfazed the unity team were at the amount of work that needed doing, and even more surprised that they managed to get a new version up and running by the end of the week!
This was discussed on Wednesday’s bug triage session as well as some other bugs to fix in the backlog. It was also cool to see some of the bugs that I had reported being discussed, knowing that all the little contributions and notes us interns raise are making a difference to the app! 
At our end of week catch up with the design team we went over how the timeline would be reset again due to the temperamental new build. They explained that it was a part of the process and things like this happened frequently in industry. It’s always better to learn how to deal with these issues now rather than later down the line, closer to release.
I ended the week with a catch-up session with one of the design team members. We discussed my interactions with the app and my understanding of the story. It was interesting to retell the story in my own words and see how I had interpreted events and characters. I had so much love for certain characters, and really enjoyed parts of the story I hadn’t initially realised until I voiced it out loud. So, I’m excited for the game to be released and for everyone to hopefully experience the story with as much affection for it as the team and I have!
We have some really exciting meetings with some members of the team lined up next week, and I can’t wait to discuss their journey into industry and share some of their tips with you! So, tune in next week for more intern adventures.
·       Bright Spark Apprentice Chloe