Today was one of the bi-weekly departmental meetings at work, and since I’m the head of the department, I get to set the agenda. And so, by way of inspiration I thought I’d share the story of how I’ve developed Amazing Tales, what I’ve learned and where it might go next.

This wasn’t just showboating, the team I run are all communciations / digital / engagement professionals, and working with design and development, audience testing and the like is relevant to our day to day work. At the start of the Amazing Tales project I’d set out to try some techniques related to audience centered design and it was time to share the learnings.

And it was a ton of fun. It was great to go back through my notes from interviewing parents about roleplaying with their kids, and to revisit my research findings. I talked about the whether or not to do a Kickstarter decision, and how Lightning Source is basically what makes this project possible.

And I got to go back to the concept sketches and being able to show the development of some of the images. I’ve learned a lot about giving feedback on this project, and about the need for ideas and concepts to percolate for a bit.

Best of all though was the enthusiastic reactions of the team, we finished the session with ten minutes of playing the game, because as gamers know, the best way to explain what a roleplaying game is, is to play one.