Saturday, 6 June 2009

At last, it is the day of the flight. I was really excited as it was A380. We were supposed to assemble early at 9 PM to check in our luggage and collect our baording pass. Things went smoothly, except the fact that the clerk forgot to write the gate num ber for the flight.

At around 10 30, we said goodbye to our relatives and friends, and proceeded to waiting area. We were so excited, Neeraj took a lot of photos for the plane itself. The plane flight really excite me, though it was cramped and not as grant as I expected, the games, music and audio was far beyond my expectation.

The foods were incredibly delicious (we even get to choose our food). Most of the games are thsoe games that you have to pay outside. Some of the movies and musics are also rare. Neeraj was so excited that he kept on pestering me to take a walk around the flight. We did that, but apparently the range is quite limited as some areas are only for the business class or suites.

We arrived at London safely, however, some of us had to change the boarding pass again. The 7 hours wait was quite hellish experience for most of us.

To my disappointment, Virgin Atlantic was not as marvellous as I expected. The plane was quite dirty, the games are very old (imagine a 1999-2001 games?! Or playing the 1980s PONG?!!!). The movies are quite old, though luckily I watched a very good movie; “Hotel for Dogs”, I cried while watching it, it is a very good show. The most annoying part was that the entertainment system can only be used after 1-2 hours after boarding the plane (and after the super long advertisements...).

We reached Boston safely, though the Indonesians (and Pakistanis or thsoe with weird names) are arrested (yeah, including me...). We had to go through a secondary custom and after 1-2 hours of “interrogation” we were allowed to enter USA (for real this time). We took a cab to the campus. We were assigned a room each. My room was on the 5th floor (and there was no elevator). So, imagine carrying a 30 kg luggage (and 10 kg backpack) to the 5th floor. We were summoned to meet for dinner and debriefed short after.

Monday, 8 June 2009

We had a breakfast in the morning followed by a briefing and short welcome by Philip Tan. After that, each of the team are allowed to meet with their US counterparts. We were a bit awkward at first (due to cultural shock perhaps). Philip then distributed the city map and Charlie Cards (to take subway and bus; they were expensive, imagine US$2 per trip).

A security officer also gave us short lecture of keeping our safety in Boston. The trip was then followed by a short tour around the campus. Some of the destinations include the food truck, the medical centre, library, lobbies and the student centre.

We then returned to the campus to take our passport to produce our student MIT card.

In the afternoon, we had a 2 hours trolley ride around Boston. The purpose is for us to get a better knowledge of Boston, a short history and perhaps for us to have a better planning for our vacation and shopping areas. We were dismissed shortly after that trip.

There were board games session in the evening, but our group missed that as we have a team dinner session.

Tuesday, 9 June 2009

We started the day with a lecture. The purpose of the lecture is for social games and to make us bond together better. We are supposed to choose a franchinse games and took 20 pictures to describe our games to other audience. Best pictures win.

I can not really tell the games in great detail due to the contract but our team goes with Left 4 Dead. It was very fun and enjoyable experience though unfortunately our planning was very messy and we changed the game (and the initial idea) in the process.

Despite all that, our team still managed to clenche the 2nd position. The prize was a chance to choose a hat to ridicule our producer. Unfortunately we missed the chance to clench the best hat.

After all that, we went to the office. We were given sandwitches for lunch (it was not nice, I assure you). Everyone had to assemble according to their post (QA with QA, artist with artist, and so on). We were briefed about the expectation and the needs of reading the QA handbook. We alo exchanced contact before debriefed.

That was practically the end of our orientation. I made myself busy by trying one of the Rock Band games for 4 players. I was the vocalist (it was my 1st time really), though we did not manage to play for long I am quite impressed that I did not too badly.

We then immersed ourself with a board games session. I played a game I never play before in my life (I do not even know how to spell the game name even now). It was however quite fun and I manage to know other people better in the process.

After that, some of the team 2 members and I took subway for the first time in our life and we went to the next stop (I forgot the name) for dinner at Wendy’s. I tried that before in Indonesia but since most of us haven’t got the taste of it, we tried that.

We went back to the campus to meet with our producer and a kind soul from MIT campus to lead us to a supermart in Andrew (4 stops away). The place was huge (okay, huge as in collosal or humongous). There were various things and I buy myself a hat ( you can get it in Singapore but I was so tempted to get one).

Wednesday, 10 June 2009

We started the day with lectures. It started from a welcoming speech by various speakers to more serious stuffs like Initial Branding (a bit like copyright issue and intellectual property). It was then followed by a lecture by Brenda about serious game designing. It was quite interesting as she brough up a point where the games now are only improving polygons and pretty much nothing else.

After the lectures, we had sandwiches (again...) but this time the lunch session aws with the team. Shortly after the lunch, we get to meet our product owners. She gave us a short recap (and introduction for our USA counterpart) of the conversation games.

After that she asked each of us to share our experience about conversation. Everyone had a fair share, though I had to admit that I am one of the more quiet ones.

We brainstormed a bit of the narrative topics we could go with before we end the day. One of the more outstanding one was a story about ghost. I could not tell the story in great detail (contract...)

We were debriefed at 5 as no overtime is allowed. Our team decided to walk around Harvard square this time. We were finding place to eat before we finally settled at some Chinese restaurant.

After that, we got some ice cream and shop around the Harvard Neighbourhood. I can not resist to buy a book there which unfortunately I found from someone there that Singapore sell those (oh man...) We went back around 9 PM.

Thursday, 11 June 2009

We had a short lecture about brainstorming today, followed by various activities that were supposed to let our brain juice flowing. It was random team in the start and then with our own team for the second ones. We came up with some funny ones (can't tell in detail... as usual..)

We then brainstorm in our team again to have as many ideas as we could come up with and then narrow them down to 3-4 ideas before we present them to our product owners/client. This time I manage to participate better compared to yesterday.

Our product owner is pretty satisfied with one of the ideas. We then tried to prototype it with some toys and playdohs. However, it get messy and getting very complex and the discussion went on. There were some scenario changes though we still keep some of the mechanics. We discussed also on the looks and how it all started.

Jon, our audioman was a great guy. He took the initiative to contact our writer, Josh who was not in the country at the moment. Our discussion could not really go too far as our writer was not present. At around 4, most of us were exhausted and become pretty quiet. Our product owners understand and allowed us to leave earlier.

I played some free arcade games before i leave. I totally forgot how to unleash some of the moves (though I still had some share of wins and losses). After that, we went to Star market for some more shopping.

the stuffs are cheap there, imagine 10 pizzas doe US$10?! or 25 Cents Doritos?! We buy some frozen foods to eat at the campus. In the end, we bought too much and decided to keep ot for another day.

Andreas Mas'oen

that was pretty much all I could remember (and after trying to keep my mouth shut from telling too much work related stuffs I am not supposed to share).