From a personal perspective on yourself:
What went right about your development process?
Everything was genuinely going great! I couldn’t have asked for a better team. But then Covid-19 hit, and everything got messed up. It was totally outside of my team’s control. But again, given that, that was outside of our control, I’d say everything else went great.
What went wrong about your development process?
Honestly? Not much. We had a dream team, everyone loved the project, they loved the rest of the team, and things were going really, really well. But then, again, Covid-19 hit. After that, the team did everything it could to keep working efficiently, but with many members having poor internet back home, and all but a few members not even owning a VR headset, we were just never able to get things back on track. Which was sad, because we would have absolutely accomplished all of our stretch goals, had this not happened.
What did you learn that you can take with you as you begin a career in the game industry?
I never truly understood how much of a difference having a team full of friends would make. You would think everyone being friends, and making memes half the time would kill our progress, but no, it made things smoother. This probably won’t be applicable in most companies, but if the environment is open to co-workers just goofing around with one another, making jokes and whatnot, then it might never even feel like work, and we’ll all get more done than if we didn’t interact beyond the bare minimum.
From a team perspective:
What went right about your development process?
The team is in agreement that we would have been solid to accomplish all of our goals and stretch goals, had we not been quarantined to our homes, with some members having no access to VR or decent internet.
What went wrong about your development process?
We agreed that there was a clear dip in most things, once quarantine began, whether it was due to lack of resources, or lack of motivation. Some members, without access to the school, were left with basically nothing to do. They had to scrounge just to find stuff to help with. But then the quarantine also brought some other detriments to productivity. Since members were now at home, it was very difficult to remain in the “work/school” mindset, resulting in many instances where work would be put off to the last minute, people would fail to keep up with daily scrum, and so on. All of this, sadly, lead to all members of the team suffering in a slow down in productivity, and the scope of the game having to be down-sized, last minute.
What did you learn about team work that you can take with you as you begin a career in the game industry?
The team as a whole came to the consensus that we’ve learned what to avoid, should this scenario occur again, when we have a job in the industry. Should we be forced to stay home, we’ve all learned how much of a detriment that could be to our efficiency and output so we know what we need to do, to avoid that happening, in the future.