Blog Post 1
I am on Team 5, acting as the producer of my team. The game we are making is “Gibby’s Escape”--a stealthy platformer that implements crafting mechanics in order to gain different types of mobility.
Working as a producer was very different from what I have experienced, at least when it comes to game development. Within our cycle of making prototypes, what I have normally experienced is that we brainstorm, distribute work amongst ourselves, and then get to completing that work. However, with the introduction of the producer, programmer and designer roles, that balance is shifted and the amount and type of work that each one of us does is somewhat different. In my case, I am a producer, meaning I am almost solely responsible for the distribution of work and the creation of tasks for my members and I to complete. Rather than it be more of a broad discussion when it comes to who does what work, I assign people the work and they complete it and check in with me.
Although the workflow is somewhat unfamiliar to me, I think that ultimately it provides a very good basis on leading a team. I learned from this sprint that I need to consider how much work each card will end up being, and how much work each of my group members are willing to do.
Some issues that we encountered as a group that ultimately fall on my responsibility is that the work that was distributed amongst us was disorganized, and disproportionately time consuming. For example, one of the cards that was given to Elizeo, our programmer, was to “create a rule sheet”. Although I gave him the option to choose that card, I ultimately should’ve stepped in and swayed him away from that. Creating a rule sheet was one of the main responsibilities of our lead designer, Francisco. Instead, it ended up being one of the last cards completed because Elizeo had other things to get to as a programmer. Another example would be that I had cards that pertained to the items that Francisco would create, which meant that I was blocked from doing some work that should have been assigned to Francisco.
The cards were too dense with work, as well. This was clearly shown to me as we only had a total of 11 cards that were assigned, but 3 of those 11 cards were not completed despite the two week time frame we had to work with. The cards should have been broken down into simpler tasks, so that they would more accurately reflect how much time we spent on each.
The work that I completed was mainly conceptual. I came up with how the security guards would work in relation to posing as an enemy to the player, as well as how the player would gain random items. The work that I did not complete was “As a player, I would like to be able to defeat enemies with crafted items”. The reason that this work went unfinished was not because I did not have enough time to finish it. Instead, it was because it was blocked by the creation of items. Ultimately, I did not focus on finishing the card because having the player be able to defeat enemies was not one of our priorities in playtesting our mechanics.
As we just kicked off Sprint 2, we are shifting gears and have begun work on our digital prototype. The work that I have currently assigned myself is to create a start menu for the player to start the game or quit out of it. I also intend to write a short blurb on that screen to describe the basic goal of the game for the player.
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