Gambit Media Day: Last Stand

9th September 2008

It was weird, seeing myself on the TV screen. It's just so weird to look at yourself from the perspective that is not of your own very eyes. I stared blankly at the screen, as I saw myself move in my signature manner in that matter of seconds; my body shuddered as I thought about the thousands of people watching the Channel 8 and Channel U news that were probably staring at "the random guy with spikey hair" on TV involved in "some game thing."

My eyes stayed glued to my every movement on the screen, as my mind wandered off into the recesses of my memory of the morning...

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"Good, you're not late," the Director said as I walked into the already-filled room.

"Hello," I said with a wide, sheepish grin on my face as I saw the Admin-girl, only to receive a wide-eyed dagger-stare as a response to my late-coming.

I quickly scanned the room for the familiar faces and walked up to them. "How is it?" I asked, as I reclined into the chair next to William.

"I think we don't have time to install it for a live-demo," he said as he stared out at the crowd bustling about the podium in the center of the room.

"Yeah, I think so too," I said with an nod of expectancy. "How's the trailer?" I asked, turning to Michelle.

"It's already in the presentation laptop, you wanna see it?" she asked, eyes red from the lack of sleep.

She inserted the disc as I held my breath in anticipation for it to boot up. A familiar scene came up on screen, one that we had all seen two Thursdays before, much to all of our chargrin; in fact, it was the EXACT same thing save for the pixelated video being replaced by still, non-pixelated screen shots. My heart sank as the cheesy "Own your masterpiece today" line came up on the screen.

"Ok," I said, deeply masking my disappointment as I stared out into the crowd.

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach; for some odd reason, no matter how many times I do it, I still feel the performance anxiety every time before I make an important presentation. But this time, it was much more than that, it was a matter of numbers.

The odds were greatly stacked against the project and me, as I realised that not only were we the only group to not have a live-demo to be able to showcase, I had just discovered that our trailer was DEFINITELY the weakest link as well. These daunting factors, stacked atop the notoriously low expectations that the management has for the project, made me feel that my task at hand was going to be a more than mountainious one.

I remember taking it upon myself to ensure that Muzaic got a proper final stand. Considering that the game was not going to be continued or showcased in almost any other form after this event, and after the enormous debacle that was the previous presentation by Michelle during Industry Day, I was determined to set things right, let the project get at least its due credit, and let Muzaic go out with a bang.

I let out a silent sigh upon the realization of these goals seeming more unreachable than they ever were given the circumstances.

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"We will now invite Jeremy Kang from the second group to present Muzaic," the project coordinator announced as I stepped up to the center podium.

I turned away from the crowd, staring prolongedly at the dual-screens waiting for the slides to come up; all as a form of masking the possible giveaway signs of anxiety that could have been written on my face.

The opening slide came up on the screen as a took a deep breath to sooth my nerves and turned around to greet the crowd, "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jeremy Kang and I am here to talk about Muzaic."

"Before I start on anything else, I would like to talk about what goes into the name 'Muzaic'. Muzaic is essentially made up of the words 'music' and 'mosaic'. So, bear these concepts in mind as we take a look at the trailer," I presented, as I turned around to stare at the screen again and to avoid the potential disheartening from the shocked look of disgust on the faces of the audience.

Recovering from the cringe and goosebumps of the cheesy 'Own your masterpiece today' closing line, I turned around, gritted my teeth and said, "I'm sure that all of you are probably slightly to very confused as to what was going on in the trailer, but don't worry, we'll get to that in a moment," with as straight a face as I could keep without bursting into a million pieces of agonizing shame.

"The goal of creating a game for the sighted and the visually impaired to play together was a double-edged sword in the our project. It was our biggest selling point, and also our biggest design challenge," I said, taking a special effort to point out the biggest selling point of the game to play to my audience; after all, they were the press, and they were probably hungering for something unique and different, and potentially juicy.

"I'm sorry that we are unable to show a live-demo of the game due to technical and time constraints, but feel free to come by our booth later if you are interested, we have it set up there," trying to smooth out the second major hurdle of the presentation. "But for now, I'll use the next best thing to explain the game, screenshots."

"So you what you actually do in the game is that you breed, like mad rabbits," I said with a cheeky grin, rousing laughter of amusement from the crowd, injecting jokes alongside the explanation of the gameplay to keep the presentation fresh and interesting despite the lack of dynamic objects moving on the screen, unlike every other team.

"And with that, I end my presentation. But before I go, a little bit of shameless advertising. You can play our game at the following address. Any questions?" I asked in closing, as I looked around the room, as the audience remained silent.

"If there are no questions then we will move on to the next group," the project coordinator intervened. Applause rang as I made my way back to the corner of the room, walking past the admin-girl along the way.

"Very well done," she said, raising two thumbs up at me, as I walked to the back of the room and sank into an empty chair with great relief.

The Director in front of me turned around, and signalled a thumbs up to me, and mouthed the words "Good job." I smiled to myself as my mind drifted away from the rest of the presentations.

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I camped by the news on Channel U waiting to see which segment of the interview and the faux-playing footage taken in the aftermath of the presentation they actually decided to show.

"Singapore-MIT alliance, Gambit Game Lab showcased their games from their second batch of students today," the anchor said in Mandarin, my face lighting up as I saw the picture of the story at the side being none other the Tribal dude in Muzaic.

"Combining a Rock and a Tribal character allows different types of music to be played. Muzaic is a one of the projects in this year's Gambit that allows both the sighted and the blind to play together," the voice-over reported in Mandarin as they showed footage of my little baby.

Footage of Michelle and I pretending to play the game came up as I stared at my every movement on the screen. There was just something really weird about looking at yourself outside of your own perspective.

Michelle's familiar mug came on the screen talking about blind users on Facebook before they cut the segment to an interview with the Director before ending the report with a video collage of the rest of the games.

"And today in sports..." the anchor went on in Mandarin as I sat there still staring blankly at the screen, smiling from ear to ear, knowing that I had gave the game a more than deserving Last Stand.