Introduction:
On February 15, 2019, my team and I made our way to Champlain College's auditorium to present our game for the third-year midmortems. We all arrived at around 5:00 PM, or roughly an hour before the presentations were set to commence. There were 18 games in total from four different classes, and we were set to present Snowball Showdown as the tenth game.
The games this year were incredibly strong. Most of them featured a surprisingly high amount of polish, and I found myself constantly looking forward to the next team's project from beginning to end. Only a few projects looked as if they had little chance to go forward, and even then, they tended to feature either a mechanic or concept that I think has promise.
The Presentation:
When the time came to present, my group stood and moved to the front of the auditorium. Fortunately for us, as the team to present immediately after the halfway point, we had a ten minute intermission to prepare, which included getting water and storing our props offstage. This was especially good since we were the only team that had a skit prepared, meaning it wasn't totally obvious we planning to perform theatrics. It also gave us the chance to check and make sure that the computer and our video's audio would run without issue.
The ten minutes then ended. Everyone shuffled back into the auditorium, likely tired from the long string of presentations that had occurred up to this point (as, keep in mind, it was now almost 8:00 PM). My teammates and I were happy about that, as it gave us an excuse to wake them up.
I'll admit that I was very tense and nervous at first, mostly because I've had issues with public speaking in the past and tend to ramble far too long, even with practice. However, our skit and trailer both received very positive audience responses, with a great deal of laughter, excitement, and applause coming as a result of each. This made it a lot easier for me to relax, and after that, I settled pretty well into my role for the slide discussing the three pillars of our game's design.
Additionally, we presented with gusto to keep the audience engaged and excited from start to finish. The process seemed to pay off; by the end of it, the watchers seemed just as interested in Snowball Showdown as we were, and we left the stage feeling satisfied, knowing that there was almost nothing we could have done to make it stronger. So with that, we returned to our seats and watched the rest of the teams show off their games.