Week 1 & 2

Week 1

New week, new team, new game. Nine teammates this time, five techs, two artists, one designer, one producer and a partridge in a pear tree. Despite being promised a co-producer none have manifested themselves, so I’ve retained all production responsibilities which I'm not sure how I feel about quite yet. Building up a rapport with and between the devs has obviously been priority number one, so the discord has been established and a social meeting at the pub has been had. Unfortunately, only four of us could make it to the pub and one member has yet to join the discord but first impressions are good. Both Oakley and Levi have voiced that whilst they didn’t do much on their last game, they are eager to do more this time around which is a positive sign.

But what's the game this time, I hear you cry. Well, this morning during the studio module we got together in our groups (allowing me to meet those that didn’t want to go to the pub) and listened to the pitches from the 2nd years who would be acting as our publishers. After 9 presentations and discussions among the group, which coincidentally allowed me to gauge the group dynamic, we settled on Don’t Turn. This is to be a platforming permadeath game with a unique mechanic that would make you more powerful over time, at the cost of edging you closer to a game over. Whilst not our first choice I’m not unhappy with the pick. I feel the scope is tight enough that it doesn’t have to be feature rich to be enjoyable but also is lenient enough that we can get creative with a lot of the core gameplay concepts. Also, the pixel art style should be easy on the artists who both seem comfortable with the medium. I’ve urged the group not to work over the holidays as I feel that should be largely unnecessary, however it will likely be ticking away in the back of their minds over the break which will hopefully speed up the preproduction process when we get back.

Week 2

First week back and we’re right into the swing of things. Yesterday we had our first meeting with the team, or rather most of the team. As usual there are some no-shows, but at this point I’ve started to accept that as the norm with these game jams. My approach this time is to try and keep the schedule focused on the core team that constantly shows up and communicates. The more unreliable members I'll have to Identify, and make sure that whilst they are still given the opportunity to work on significant amounts of the project, I’ll try and steer them away from working on anything that blocks other aspects of development. Initially at least, if they become more reliable then obviously, I’ll give them more important tasks. At the moment there's only two who didn’t show up to the first meeting and they are both tech students so considering we have three other programmers who all seem keen, I'm not overly concerned.

As for the team that did show up, everyone seems keen on the project and

eager to work. My new Co-producer van also seems capable despite having just transferred from the arts course, so whilst I’m sort of taking the lead in the producer role whilst she gets to grips with it, I’m going to leave the management of the art side of things largely to her as there are only two artists, and her expertise in the field should help her to run things smoothly.

I’m also keen to implement what I learned from the producer from creative assembly. I think that whilst a lot of what he talked about applies less to smaller scale projects, the implementation of real and fake milestones to keep motivation high and the team on track should be something I investigate as we go forward. I also liked the Idea of incentivising in person meetings whilst making those who are joining from home feel like they are still part of the meeting. It’s something that I'll play around with during our Thursday meetings.

Speaking of which, going forward with this project Van and I have decided on one-week sprints and two meetings a week, one during the dev slot on Monday and another on Thursday. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Thursday meeting might have to become a fortnightly occurrence, as I'm not convinced there will be many developments between Monday and Thursday. We’ll try it for the first few weeks and see how it goes.

As for the project itself, I've taught everyone how to use Jira and the source control has been set up by one of our programmers. So, a massive improvement over the last game Jam already. I’ve got our designer Michael working on a global design document and asked Van to get the artists settled on a consistent art style which should help with the overall cohesiveness of the game. A few of our programmers also worked on some features over the holidays so we’re ahead in that regard. My main goal is to prevent any blockers from bottlenecking the development as that was a large issue in the last game jam. So if I can keep one eye on all the tasks that’ll need to be completed in the following weeks then I can hopefully keep everyone working on the game at a constant rate.