Lumen’s final prototype is being assembled!

Our manufacturer, NiceFunnyGames, sent us in-progress photos of Lumen’s final prototype. They reported that all game files have been printed and that Lumen’s samples should be finished in two days. 

This is Lumen’s third official prototype. The differences between it and the second prototype are as follows:

• Updated game logo. The name was changed from ‘Lumen: A Game of Photographic Terminology’ to ‘Lumen PhotoVocab Game’.
• Rewritten and redesigned Player Guide (slightly larger in size).
• Updated game box layout.
• 4 photo cards were swapped out to aid variety.
• Four vocabulary cards were added to make the game an even 400 cards (100 vocabulary cards and 300 photo cards).

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Lumen, Prototype II

Several changes were made to the second version of Lumen to improve the game. More terminology and photo cards were added, the player guide was rewritten, and the game box was redesigned. 

This version of Lumen consists of 96 Terminology cards, 300 Photo cards, and a card-sized 8-page accordion fold player guide.

Samples produced: 7

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2023 was a busy year and Lumen’s Education Edition is close to being published. I’m working on a few final tweaks and am hoping to place the order for its first official production run within the next week.

There’s a lot of news to share since my last blog post–the website has unfortunately taken a back seat so I could focus on the actual game. Now that the game is almost done I’m in the process of building a new website so I won’t waste too much time making updates here but here are a few highlights from this past year.

• Lumen’s name has been updated to Lumen PhotoVocab Game from Lumen: A Game of Photographic Terminology.
• The player guide has been rewritten and is much clearer, and more fun, and the game is now themed around submitting work for a photography exhibition. The gameplay didn’t change. I just realized that it plays just like submitting work to an art show so that was a fun realization.
• I’ve hired various part-time crew to help me get things done. I realized this past year that despite being an amazing one-woman show I cannot do everything myself. Starting a business is a lot of work and there are lots of things to juggle. It’s too overwhelming to try to do it all myself. Shoutout to Karl, Madison, Abbey, and Shankar; and to my game publishing coach Joe Slack, and the many other people helping with various projects.
• Lumen now has a Print-to-Play sampler edition available for purchase in our shop. It’s a smaller version of the game we put together to give people the opportunity to go ahead and get the game in their classrooms and/or to test it out before ordering the actual game.

There’s more but I’ll save the other news for another time since I need to go get back to work on the game. 😅

Thanks for your patience and support!

~Captain Carol

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Ahoy mates! This past November we had the pleasure of working with illustrator Sara Wasserboehr to develop a new logo and bring Blackwater’s mascot to life. We are so excited to finally share them with you.

Meet Blackwater’s new mascot—Rowan, aka Roe for short. She’s a swashbuckling octopod on a mission to make the world a better place through adventure, fun, and education.

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I had prepped a pretty straight forward introductory talk on game-based learning to be followed by the 30+ attendees getting to play Lumen and experience game-based learning for themselves but I ended up changing my talk a bit at the last minute. The morning presentations leading up to mine were all super heavy so I felt like I needed to transition the mood a bit more for mine. I ended up speaking more about why I’m passionate about game-based learning and why I think game-based learning is needed in this day and age and I could tell that resonated with quite a few people. Yay!

Games have often been thought frivolous but I personally have found them essential for my mental health and great vehicles for experiential learning. When we’re kids we naturally learn by playing and creating games but at a certain point in our development most of us are told we have to stop playing and get serious. Personally, I think that’s horrible advice.

We live in a time where we’re constantly aware of every awful thing happening in the world. We’re overworked, overwhelmed with stress, and often subject to crushing amounts of peer/societal pressure. We need play and joy in our lives now more than ever and games are a great vehicle for that. In an ideal world everyone would know that it’s okay to play and have fun while also being productive but since so many of us have been programmed to believe that it’s not I feel it’s important to give people permission, or at least an opportunity, to play and relax a bit. Technically none of us need permission from anyone else but that doesn’t mean we don’t still desire it. I know I love when people give me an excuse to be silly or playful and I know I’m not alone in that feeling.

My talk went well and people were already jumping into Lumen before I went over how to play so that was very exciting to see. I even got to sit down and play with one table and it was such a delight to see everyone having a great time. It was exactly the kind of reaction I was hoping for and is the reason I love games so much. I got some great feedback afterwards and now feel ALL THE PRESSURE to get this game out ASAP. 😅

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Anyways, here are some photos from my MFA thesis exhibition. We were still in a pandemic situation when it took place so I was so touched that so many people came out to support me. The exhibition included the game, including copies that people were able to play at the show, large prints of cards from the game that attendees were asked to vote on (so they could experience a hint of the game if they didn’t have the opportunity to play the actual thing), and a How to Play video. Everyone seemed to have a great time and I got a ton of great feedback.

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Spent part of the day designing QR cards for Lumen. This website is still a work in progress so it made more sense to share a Linktree for Lumen since I have information about it here, on my artist site, and across social media. I was originally going to add some other text to the card but my designer brain kicked in and was like ‘let’s keep it simple’ which is great because I’ll be able to use this for pretty much everything since updating the Linktree is super easy. I kind of think I should have put my name on it but I like how it looks without it.

I will say, if you’re going to use a QR code it’s a good idea to also share the actual link — if it’s short to aid accessibility, or at the very least tell people what to expect.

These babies should arrive in a little over a week. Can’t wait!

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Ahoy friends! I’m excited to announce that I’ll be presenting at the 2022 SPE South Central conference, Come Together, taking place Oct. 14-15 in Shreveport, LA.

I’ve been a member of SPE since 2010 and am super pumped to get to share my thesis research with my favorite photography group. I’ve exhibited work at SPE but this will be my first time presenting so that is also super exciting. I don’t know the exact date and time of my presentation yet but below you can find the title and a bit of information regarding my session.

Game-Based Learning: Building Competence in Visual Literacy Through Simulation

Game-based learning is a growing academic practice that encourages the use of games and gamification to engage students and improve retention. This presentation will include an introductory talk on game-based learning and the development of Lumen, a card game designed to prepare students for photographic discussion and critique, followed by the opportunity to play Lumen with fellow attendees.

Lumen is a card game designed to serve as an icebreaker and a teaching tool for introductory photography students. The game introduces players to professional terminology useful in critique and discussion, while also encouraging critical thinking, debate, and analysis.

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Creating the Terminology Deck

I began by brainstorming terms for the terminology deck from my own experience with photography and critique, then combed through photography glossaries and textbooks for additional terms. I tried to find a good balance between technical terms that weren’t so specific it would be nearly impossible to have a relevant image and a variety of descriptive and interesting words for players to interpret. Once I looked through multiple dictionaries and textbooks to find the definitions that help most relevant for photographic discussion and critique. Finding and choosing definitions was a bit difficult at times because a lot of photographic term definitions can’t be found in standard dictionaries.

Due to production restraints my terminology deck was limited to 70 cards.

Creating the Photo Deck

For the photo deck, I initially thought about using my own photography and that of people I know but quickly realized I did not have time to do and complete my project in time for my MFA thesis show so I curated images from pexels.com, a free stock photography site. To select my images I began by searching my terms and searching ideas inspired by my terms and I just saved anything that popped out at me. Once I had about three hundred images collected I began the process of curating them down to the exact number I would need (180). I tried to make sure there were at least two or more super relevant images for each term card while also ensuring there was a large variety of images in both style and subject matter.

Production Limitations

I knew at the beginning that Lumen would work best if it had about 500 cards or more with about a 1 to 4 ratio of terms to images but my first prototype was limited by both time and production options. I wanted a professionally printed game for my MFA thesis exhibition so I had to limit the content of my game to what I could find and have produced in time for my show. Finding printers for standard size playing cards wasn’t very difficult but cards did have to be ordered in certain quantities. Finding packaging for my game was the more challenging aspect and I ended up having to limit the size of Lumen to a standard sized deck box which was only capable of holding 250 cards.

Normally you probably wouldn’t worry about this until after playtesting but I was on a time crunch so I had to make sure I was creating a game I could actually have created in time for my MFA show.

Asset Creation

InDesign was the most efficient software to use for the creation of the playing cards since there were going to be so many. InDesign is a page layout software that excels in multi page documents and text formatting. For my terminology deck I was able to quickly create a template and set up paragraph styles (text formatting shortcuts) to have full control over the design of the cards and be able to quickly make updates to the 70 cards that make up the deck. I also used InDesign to create the photo cards. I just had to make sure that the photos were able to extend over the edge for a full bleed print without ruining the photo composition.

Lumen’s logo, card backs, rulebook, and packaging were all designed in Adobe Illustrator.

Early Prototypes & Playtesting

When creating a game it’s important not to put too much work into the prototype until after you’ve playtested the game and know it works well and doesn’t need to be altered. My first few prototypes were self-printed on copy paper, hand trimmed, and not particularly pretty. One challenge I encountered while creating Lumen was the pandemic. It was a bit difficult to playtest Lumen while everyone was quarantining so I was initially only able to playtest it with my husband and a friend that was staying with us. Later on when people felt more comfortable I was able to test it with slightly larger groups composed of friends and family. It would have been ideal to playtest it with the target audience before finalizing this version of the game but enough playtesting was done for me to feel confident in it’s current form.

Sourcing a Professional Prototype

Production considerations heavily influenced the design of the Lumen. It’s fairly easy to find companies that can create custom playing cards but finding packaging is a bit more of a challenge. I ended up limiting the amount of cards in Lumen based on a standard box size I found with a different company. I ordered the cards from boardgamesmaker.com, the box from printplaygames.com, and I self-printed the instruction booklet.

I wasn’t able to test how Lumen performed with larger groups until after pandemic lightened so I originally guessed it would work well for 3-6 players. I’ve since had the opportunity to playtest Lumen at my MFA show, quite a few game nights, and in over half a dozen photography and design classes, each with multiple groups. I’ve been happy to learn Lumen works well for up to 8 players, with 5-6 being the ideal game size. I originally wanted to create a game that the entire class could play at once but upon observation I think it’s better to divide classes into smaller groups for a more personal experience.

Lumen works well as is but after getting to play it in several classes with larger groups I’ve decided to add at least 100 more photo cards and make a few changes to the packaging that I did not have time to do before. This means it’s going to take a bit longer to make the game available but I think it will be worth the extra wait.

When I first created Lumen I wasn’t really thinking about trying to publish the game but the responses to it have been so great I’m doing my best to see if I can make it available at an affordable price. I’m currently working on a GameCrafter version that will be expensive but will at least make the game available for purchase by schools and any of y’all that just can’t live without it right now. But I have hopes of possibly doing a Kickstarter or small batch run of the game early next year if I can find an affordable manufacturer for small runs.

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The Society for Photographic Education is ‘the leading forum for fostering the understanding of photography in all its forms’ and is essentially THE photography conference for educators and students. It’s a wonderful community that I’ve had the pleasure of being a part of since 2010, and it’s the perfect community for my game Lumen. I’m excited to talk about game-based learning and hopefully inspire others to give it a try either by using games in their classrooms or by creating their own, but I’m also super pumped to share Lumen with SPE. Lumen was created with photography students and professors in mind so I can’t wait to see the response from my target audience. I’m also super pumped to share Lumen with my SPE friends because for years I’ve been trying to figure out how to weave together my graphic design and photography skills and this is a project that definitely does that.

The 2023 SPE Annual Conference will be March 16-18, 2023 at the Sheraton Denver Downtown in Denver, Colorado. The schedule hasn’t been posted yet but you can find out more information on the SPE 2023 Homecoming Conference page.

Here’s the title and description for my teaching & learning workshop.

Game-Based Learning: Building Competence in Visual Literacy Through Simulation

Game-based learning is a growing academic practice that encourages the use of games and gamification to engage students and improve retention. This presentation will include an introductory talk on game-based learning and the development of Lumen, a card game designed to prepare students for photographic discussion and critique, followed by the opportunity to play Lumen with fellow attendees.

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