Introduction
Through my critical research journal, I will be going through my research, processes, the three challenges, the team, and my previous experience against my current team. I will also be covering the potential outcome that the team is currently looking at approaching.
For my journal, I intend to use the Gibbs reflective cycle methodology to critically evaluate my work, team, and also my own development from my previous experience up till now.
Originally I began my experience in the Launchpad program back in the September cohort of 2019. I was on team 40 with Joshua Hadley and Kerry Scane. Unfortunately, by the end of the 3rd month into the program, the team fell apart. Literally, just a week before the new cohort started on January the 27th. The two major components that came into play in the split of team 40 were lack of communication and also one member not pulling their weight in regards to the workload. They acknowledged their issues many times before, however, they clearly were not willing to work on those issues.
Previously I went through the same process as everyone else. Having the interviews, potential tests, and also psychometric testing to become part of the Launchpad program. On this occasion, I was moved with another teammate of mine to what is now team 47. Realistically, looking back on how the teams were set up. A team of three I don’t believe was sufficient due to the workload from both the Masters's degree and also the Launchpad program, however the lack of communication and a team member not having work up to scratch could have had a potential toll on that regard, but ideally, I believe a nice number of four people in a team is how it should be especially a game development team. The reason being is so you’re able to cover different areas more easily and efficiently and if multiple things need to be learned, skill-wise. Then it is more achievable and evenly spread out. This also depends on the experience of the team members involved. This time around, we are a strong team of five with varied skill sets, however, some skill sets do overlap.
The Team
Team 47 is made of five members with various skills and backgrounds. When we were placed together to form a team, we came together and decided to do two things straight away. 1st was that each member was to take the 16 personalities test for each of us to roughly work out what each person is like, as we don’t know each other so we were trying to find ways to understand one another.
For the team, these are all very good and varied strengths, however, I’m unsure whether I believe all that is listen from 16Personalities. The reason why I made this judgment is by looking at the strengths that are under my Defender role. I think it all depends on what the task at hand is and no matter what interest, passion, beliefs, and aim for the future affect all potential strengths. In general, I and others don’t believe that I am particularly patient, in fact, more short-fused than anything, however, in certain situations, I do have patience because I have to have it. I.e. someone not understanding their role, other people's work, children, again, it is always based on the situation or task at hand and the same thing goes for the potential weaknesses. I believe that 16Personalities should definitely be used more as a guideline even though I do agree with a fair amount of what was said about my personality as it matches.
Below I will be going through the skills that each member has and why I believe that combining all of these skills makes us a great team to tackle the potential challenge. This is the 2nd thing we decided to sit down and work out together as a team. Our specialty, proficiency, and what we have no experience in. Basically, missing skills that would be potentially helpful to us, and make our lives easier in the future.
We have certain areas covered in red, some of us are willing to learn maybe parts of those areas or not at all and potentially look for someone with that specific missing skills if none of us are willing to learn it or aren’t proficient in any way. I.e. I wouldn’t do animation. I have experience in stop-motion and also doing some character rigging and animating. It isn’t a strong point of mine, nor an interest. Therefore, I would end up being more of a hindrance to the team if I said ‘Yes, I will learn it when I don’t like it or have an interest in it to pursue it. Saying that Dave himself, he’s a full-fledged 3D artist and in previous meetings, he mentioned that he would be interested in learning to do animation. Sure, this will take time; however, it will lessen the cost of production. Our backup is also to buy asset packs and as a last resort, we would outsource with the help of Launchpad.
Even though some of our skills overlap I do believe this works in our favor. The reason being is if one of us is struggling with a certain area of a piece they are creating or a have too much work on their plate (Unfortunately, I like to claim a lot of work, but then struggle to do it all, but I learned my lesson from my first experience at Launchpad, although there were other things that had an impact when it came to working).
Agile & SCRUM Theory
Originally, this cohort's Agile & SCRUM theory practices workshop was meant to be on the 11th of February, however, it was canceled due to illness and then moved to the 6th of March. I think this time round I enjoyed it more and felt more comfortable with it and I understood it more. I had a brief previous experience with it during my BA in Games Design, however, not as full-on experience as the one Phil Marshall provides for the cohorts. Due to having done it when I first joined I mostly enjoyed it when I was placed in a new team with different people who weren’t as knowledgeable in Agile & SCRUM theory. I think the reason why I enjoyed it so much was that I felt comfortable, that comfort in having knowledge about it made me feel comfortable leading and advising the team as to how to approach the tasks we were given to complete together using Agile & SCRUM.
There’s a variety of Agile methodologies like Kanban, SCRUM, Crystal, etc. Saying that Agile is more of a set of principles and values within the methodologies that I previously mentioned that strongly affected software development.
We decided to go with the Kanban methodology for our research stage using Trello on Microsoft Teams. I really don’t like Trello or Kanban in general, especially for game development as it’s too messy. The reason why I say it’s too messy is that there are so many different disciplines in game development. You’re looking at animation, concept art, 3D modeling, programming, environment artist, etc. It would be difficult to keep everything neat and in order using the Kanban methodology or Trello. Although, using the Kanban methodology was decent for research division and conducting as we divided each challenge with a specific color as you can see, and also added what each member of the team was going to research.
I have looked at the SCRUM methodology that the team will be using in future development. As you can see below I have made a little design of how this methodology will be implemented in our game development. When you look at the SCRUM framework, you will notice that there are three main roles.
First and foremost is the product owner. The person that controls the work by setting the priorities to deliver the highest value and/or quality. Then you have the Scrum master. This person acts more as a servant leader to the team. They protect the whole of the Scrum proves and prevent any potential issues that may occur. Lastly is the development team. A self-organizing group that takes on and determines how to deliver units of work in periodic segments. The traditional approach is the development team gets given tasks to complete by the product manager.
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Unlike my first experience within a team, this time round we didn’t have set roles as they seemed to swap around between team members. Saying that and Josh was being asked a lot of questions in regards to Launchpad, our challenges, and also the MA due to the rest of the team being in uncharted waters. I quite enjoyed giving advice and explaining how it works, I feel that if you nourish something it will flourish and give back tenfold. Doesn’t always work though of course.
Our Challenges
Team 47 was provided with three challenges in the first few weeks. Here I shall go through these challenges.
1st Challenge: Shadow – The rise of cloud gaming
Our industry partner is Shadow a French tech company that focuses on providing its customers with the best potential virtual PC at decent prices. This virtual PC however, you can use anywhere, be it on your TV, ancient laptop, tablet, mobile, MAC, etc. You literally have power at your fingertips, without having to worry about spending hundreds and potentially thousands to upgrade your PC in the future.
Our job is to;
To develop a game with perpetual gameplay, that can be played on multiple platforms.
- Gameplay changes based on the device being used.
- The UI adapts automatically to any device it is on; gameplay remains the same.
- Showcases the features, mechanics & design that are only possible in this particular gaming environment.
When we first got the challenge I wasn’t too sure about how I felt about it. I was not excited about it, nothing jumped out at me. However, the more research we conducted and the more we discussed. I became more passionate about the challenge. I started to see the true potential behind it. The future with this innovative technology. from the research I had conducted myself, I saw no real direct competitors as they seemed to have a couple of things different from each of their potential competitors. From a game development perspective as well, this could be of great potential for us as an indie developer. The more meetings we had with Rija Goldscheider and Yannis Weinbach the more clarity, we got in regards to expectations and support we would get from them. I recall when we asked them about potential funding in the future and they laughed it off. One of my teammates took it as an insult, however, if I had a team that isn’t a company yet and is small, not told me whether they were accepting the challenge or what they are planning design-wise. I would have had the same reaction, so I don’t hold that against them. They’re very chilled people and they’re direct when they can be depending on company policy as to what they can and can’t say. Overall, so far I see the potential and the money behind the business and product. Even a potential investment for the future for us as a company, be it from Shadow or even others as this is an up-and-coming technology.
2nd challenge: Simulator challenge
The aim of the challenge is to identify a market opportunity in the simulation genre, and create a game that is able to be achieved by a small team, however, will have broad market appeal. As a team, we had to both assess and review the market of simulation games and see where the market is going in the next five years. What can be done by us to bring a new experience, i.e. new mechanics, settings, etc. Investigate games that have been successful in this genre and build a KPI and finally design a game that appeals to a specific audience that we have identified in the genre and brings a new USP. I was quite thrilled with this challenge, even though we didn’t have a partner as it was given to us by Adrian Ruiz. The challenges we have been given so far have been better than what I was given when I was in team 40, as they were so subject-sensitive.
We looked extensively at this genre. Some of us like myself enjoy simulation games. I tested out a few games myself like Planet Zoo, Jurassic World: Evolution, Fishing Planet, Cooking Simulator, etc. During my research, I discovered that they all seemed to have the same problem in one form or another and that was the user interface. It wasn’t straightforward or easy to work out. I am the same as the majority of players. I don’t tend to go through the tutorial because I get bored so easily and I want to just jump into the game and learn hands-on. I looked at the Steam Tags to see how many simulator games there are out there. We had team meetings to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this challenge. Even though myself and a couple of other members love this challenge we discovered that it’s too overly saturated, market-wise. We still discussed potential game ideas for the future. I came up with a potential solution; an archaeology simulator game where you have to find funding, buy supplies, discover dinosaur bones, sell them to museums and work online with other players to bring them together. There are so many different ways of making a potentially boring subject, fun! Although the competition was still too high, so we were looking forward to seeing what the final challenge had to potentially offer team 47.
3rd Challenge: Super Rare Games
We must identify a potential market opportunity in a limited-run game publishing model that targets the idea of conveying a tailored experience to the SRG audience. Designing with a focus on the foundations of the scarcity of the video game to create an original experience.
When we first received this challenge I wasn’t thrilled about it. I liked the money side of things as there was a higher chance of us receiving funding, however, I did not like the fact that it was capped. We went off as a team and divided the research between us, although, the SWOTs for all challenges were done together by discussing and putting individual research findings forward. I looked at other competitions with Super Rare Games. Other companies that create physical copies of indie games with other physical components. The competition was high, Super Rare Games have a dedicated Nintendo Switch audience, however, other companies like Limited Run Games offer their limited run games on a variety of platforms therefore, that in itself gives them a broader reach due to the size of the audience. You can also see this through their social media platforms. I.e Super Rare Games only have 5,079 followers on Facebook (Super Rare Games, 2020), however, Limited Run Games have 42,256 followers on Facebook (Limited Run Games, 2020). During one of the meetings with our industry partner, George Perkins. He claimed the games sell off very quickly, although they did have some that did drag along. The more we discussed this and the cap the less appealing this challenge started to get. Even more so when you’re trying to think of the future of the company and where that would leave us in regards to developing a second game. What if we didn’t want to do another one for SRG? What if we want to test other water, but our audience is the SRG audience? It’s all very all eggs in one basket kind of situation.
Potential Solution & Outcome
The team was quite split in regards to two challenges. We liked the scarcity and the potential “definite” money from SRG, and the new tech provided by Shadow and the audience back up behind them. More team meetings took place “Counselling Thursdays” as we called them. We discussed how we felt about the challenges and how we could approach them. Together, we came up with an operation cake & eat it. This was combining the SRG challenge so we would still get funding yet use the Shadow product to develop our game and show what can be done on Shadow. We put this idea forward to Jo and Adrian. We spoke more to SRG and to Shadow as well and the team split started showing even more. Myself, Josh, and Dave wouldn’t do the SRG challenge without Shadow, and Sam and Emily wouldn’t do Shadow alone.
Discussing the potential of operation cake and eating it with Jo we saw a high risk, the risk of losing Shadow as a partner completely, a risk that three of us weren’t willing to take due to the audience behind shadow, money, and potential for the future. The outcome of these risks caused the team to discuss what our aspirations are and how much risk we are willing to take. Safe to say, Josh and Dave, want to build a company that falls under the monopoly spectrum, which is where Shadow leans towards too, whereas Sam and Emily see the competition spectrum as a safer play due to what SRG offers are as a company. (Thiel and Masters, n.d.)
Conclusion
To conclude our research was a healthy balance between primary and secondary, especially with all the meetings and emails we sent to our potential industry partners full of questions to get the best potential information to come to a solution. This divided the team more. We discussed with Steve (our coach) that the team has come to a natural split. Three of us will be doing the Shadow challenge and the other two will be doing the Super Rare Games challenge.
We then had to discuss with Phil Marshall how we should approach this and we also looked at who else could potentially join the team once it’s split. Emily and Sam have looked at Carl as he’s a programmer. Myself, Josh, and Dave looked at Mike Plume as he’s an environment artist and 3D artist this would fill the environment art gap which will make the team more self-efficient. Currently, the talks are still going on as the COVID-19 situation, has added some more complications. So a lot more discussions to be had in the future and hopefully get the confirmation that the team is able to split.
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