Debriefing: Lessons learned from launch (Day 1)

By David J Garcia Thursday January 7, 2010

We’ve opened Pandora’s box. The Frugality Game is now live for the public, and there’s no going back now. From a development standpoint, “we’ve fired a bullet, and now we’re running in front of it.”

Some people will love you, some will hate you, and some don’t care. We’ve gotten the whole range of comments, some amazingly supportive, others paranoid, helpful, negative, disinterested or fanatic. Some of my favorites:

“I love it! Graphics are great. If this teaches me something, I’ll be grateful. If it’s just fun, that’s okay, too. :->”
“My husband and his sister are both deaf so I know how having captions would really be helpful to another who segment of society.”
“343 on todays hit the piggy game. Whats your score?”
“I was suprised to find out what the game was about.I didn’t expect it to be what it is,but on the other hand it was very interesting.I like the fact that they only let you play so much at a time.It makes you want to go back again.It might be good for me to play it so I can learn to look at things in another way and figure stuff out.I like this game”
“I think I found a glitch. where do I report it?” (Another user responded with the answer).
“Was really excited about the game until it asked your monthly income. Not comfortable sharing such info so I lied. I may sound like a conspiracy nutjob but hey with this obsession with control by our gov’t who knows what they have in store for us. I will stick with you unless you continue asking for personal financial info.” (The government already knows your income–and working with real numbers is the best way to actually improve your finances).
the game is alful!”
“So far the game is interesting….I like it two thumbs up (:”
“why would I want a game to know how much money I make on a monthly basis. I think this might be a scam! Not playing again!” (The best part of this was the response from other users–read the next two).
“Some people crack me up. So rude for no reason. Shooting down people’s good ideas & a scam, come on?? It’s a cute game & I think it’s great that a group of people would go to so much effort to help us, in our economy, learn how to live better & prepare for the future. It is slow, I need a skip button or something! And it’s a bit cheesy, but I can tell a lot of effort went into it & that’s appreciated. I’ll play, you can always learn something new!”
“It is a good idea. The public needs to be better about spending, and because games appeal to everyone, this is the perfect medium. The people that have left comments in the vein of “OMG THEY WILL STEAL MY INFORMATIONS” are just ignorant. You can find out more about someone with a Google search than you could with this game.
Educate yourself, stop being paranoid, and perhaps take something for what it is. Fear is the result of ignorance.”
“Would love to something like this done with every high school student in order to graduate high school.”