It became clear that we aren't just developing a student game anymore - this game is something we want to take to the next level and we feel like we have the talent and ideas to get there.
Myself and Kyle had an interesting talk after we demoed to a representative from Microsoft, and honestly he gave us very rough feedback and didn't play the game for more than a minute before spilling into a tangent about how we should change the design of our game to be more like a toy than a game. Part of it was our fault, because we didn't have a good teaching method implemented at the time and were only making builds to show to the class (basically demonstrate what we had been working on).
Everyone kind of started to panic about the advice, as has happened in the past, but we urged everyone to stay patient and wait for the tutorial levels to start getting put together before making judgments on the complexity. I think a weaker group would have taken the advice too literally and not examined WHY they were saying what they were saying. We are choosing to remain patient because we believe in what we are developing, and it just hasn't had a good chance to be exposed to a new player yet.
At the very least, this experience gave us a good outline of how we should teach players to play our game, if an experienced player wanted to go anywhere and do anything in the first 10 seconds of playing. We want to teach players slowly, one concept at a time, and even include concepts that we are not consciously thinking about. I think this diligence and patience will pay off in the end. Ultimately, we just want to have something that people can pick up and play by the time we're ready to demo for EAE day.
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