The creative process is a scary endeavor. At times, it feels great to put all of your energy into making something. But because you put your everything into something, it can feel extremely nerve-wracking to present your work to a public audience, especially judges. The first time I experienced this was when I worked on Magnet Run, an educational video game for grade school students. 

The Audience

Before we had the students play our game, we had to set up a venue to provide a space for the kids to not only comfortably play our game, but also to choose our game instead of the other 3 games. After all the setup, we only had to anxiously await for our audience to play the game we spent so much time working on.  For the next three hours, it was all a blur. Between helping the students get their turn on the computer and getting their opinions on the game, I was simply too busy to think about how nervous I was. When I saw the students enjoying and sharing the game with others, I knew I loved making video games right then and there. 

The Critics

The judges were the last hurdle of Magnet Run’s journey. To prepare, our team made multiple slides detailing the development of Magnet Run, the student’s reception, and the game’s future pipeline. After many days rehearsing our presentation and preparing for any follow-up questions, I was sitting there at a Zoom conference, dressed as professionally as I could.  Our team was the second to go so I did not have as much time to marinate in my uneasiness but seeing how the first team went, it alleviated my nerves and I went full-force with our presentation.

When I spoke, I talked about the art of Magnet Run and how we integrated the mechanics and educational parts of the game into the art design. At some points, I did notice the judges were enjoying the art presentation, especially the art judges, so I kind of started playfully bragging about our player character design and the judges all kind of laughed which melted my stress away.

The Judgement

Once all the presentations finished, we were left with the judges’ vote on which team seemed the best educational video game. Our team received second place, shy of 1st place with one vote. Honestly, I felt extremely proud of our rank especially since I know I earned it with all the work I put into this game. The judges seemed to also really enjoy the art of Magnet Run so I feel a bit validated because of that. All I know now is that I want to continue this video game development dream.