Expanded Post Mortem

Expanded Post Mortem Documentation

Section I: Self-Assessment – 15pts

Complete the following. Please include the questionsandprovide examplesin your responses.

1. Detail your experience and skills coming into the program.

a. Coming in to the Game Design Master’s program, my skills and experience were in Creative Writing, world building, and a minuscule amount of knowledge in programing language.

2. Identify your areas of weakness.

a. My weaknesses lied in my inexperience with programing, game engines, art, game making in general, I came here to learn how to better write for games.

3. Provide a comprehensive description of your duties during capstone.

a. During capstone my duties were original to work with the other writers in the capstone to flesh out the writing duties for the game Dino Tank, which included writing trigger dialogue, editing existing Dialogue, and writing back story for the game. However, these tasks were few as we were in the later stages of the game so the majority of my tasks were QA.

b. As a QA tester for Dino Tank, I tested the game looking for bugs and errors. After that I tried to get into the design side and created a GDD for a new game but that game was eventually cut and afterward I went back to writing lore and backstory for another project.

4. How has what you’ve learned applied to those duties?

a. They didn’t, other than learning how to format a GDD and maybe prototyping, nothing I learned in this programed applied toward my duties.

5. Explain how your role fit into the larger project.

a. As a writer on Dino Tank my role was to create dialogue triggers for some of the campaign levels and assist the design team in implementing them into the game. This was an auxiliary role that brought life into the world of Dino Tank.

b. As a QA tester for Dino Tank I played through the campaign, arcade mode and multi-player looking for bugs as well as trying to recreate and confirm identified bugs. This was a support role that improved the quality of the game for the players.

6. Teams are usually characterized as 3-12 people who interact directly in assigned roles as part of a larger organization. Often used in sport and work settings, the members have specialized knowledge, skills and abilities. Based on the following criteria: Power, Leadership, Decision Making and Activities or Tasks was your team a Traditional Work Group, Traditional Team or Self-Managing Team? What impact did this have on the process? Would a different configuration be more effective? (Refer back to Kennedy’s class.)

a. This is a difficult question to answer as Dino Tank was a long term project that started long before I worked on it, meaning there were many people who worked on the game at different points in time. for all I know, their styles could have been different from what I experienced. However, while I was there the studio lacked strong central leadership so we were more in line with a Self-Managing Team style. As to the impact, quite frankly no one wanted to work on this project as it had been in the works for almost 5 years at that point so it took a longer than normal amount of time for work to get done.

Section II : Post Mortem – 65 pts

A) Case Study Response (30pts)

Read Gamasutra'sAnalysis of 155 postmortems here. (Be sure to click on the link that says "freely downloadable". The entire document is 10 pages long.)

Spend some time thinking about the different categories and the prominence of some issues over others in the analysis. In one page, discuss the following:

§ Do any of the report's findings surprise you?

o Instead of surprise, I would say educational would be a more appropriate term. This being due to how little experience I actually have with making a game from start to finish. I of course could relate to a few of the categories such as documentation, team, and scheduling as those were categories where I had problems in while attempting to make WARLORDS.

§ How does your capstone experience compare to the report's findings? 

o I feel as if a lot of their findings would not apply simply because the studio has too many unique aspects that professional studios either simply won’t experience or wont experience to the degree that this studio does. An example of this would be when designing the game the available talents of your team are taken into consideration, however, this is more difficult to do in our studio because people are leaving and coming in every other month and we don’t know who we will have available to work on a project within a few months.

§ What issues were most prominent during your capstone? 

o One of the biggest issues was Dino Tank, this project had been in production for so long that we were having trouble recruiting people into the studio as no one wanted to work on it. this also lead to a breakdown in leadership which further effected the length of the production time, it did not help that the Project Owner kept wanting to add or change features on the game.

o Another issue the studio faced was revolving door of talent coming in and out of the studio as well as the lack of control as to who applies to the studio made it hard to acquire people with the skills and abilities we either needed or wanted, this was another major factor that prolonged Dino Tanks production.

o While I was there one of the biggest issues was a lack of leadership and management. Because there is no permanent positions in the studio the people running it changed every few months, if something doesn’t get passed down or someone who is good at managing and or leading doesn’t come in, it can ruin the studio and that is one of the problems we had faced.

o Another problem is the lack of professional oversite in the studio, by professional I don’t mean the behavior of the members but the lack of industry veterans to learn from, I attended a meeting with successful industry veterans and asked them if my Master’s Degree would qualify me for anything other than an entry level position and they told me no because “that entry level job will teach me 90% of what I need to know in the industry.” This essentially means that the studios we have here are filled with and are run by people who only know 10% of what they need to know and has created a situation of the blind leading the blind.

§ What identified categories would they fall under?

o The categories that the above issues would fall under are scheduling, scope, team, as well as obstacles.

B) Reflection (35pts)

Reflect on your overall experience and identify critical points of learning. This section can be 1 to 2 pages.

In your reflection consider - What went right? What went wrong? Why did things go right or wrong? How did things go right or wrong? How did the important events you chose to focus on affect the overall experience? What is the final takeaway/newfound insight that you are leaving with?

What went right and why

This is probably the hardest section because there were simply too many things that went wrong in the studio that it is hard to identify something that went right. However, if I had to identify at least one thing that was right in the studio it would be the studio culture, we got along well for the most part, and could joke around a get along with each other fairly easily without much if any animosity in the studio.

What went wrong and why

The first is scheduling and Dino Tank, that project should have been dropped a long time ago but was kept on and aloud to fester in the studio quite frankly is the primary cause of many of the studios problems even after the studio moved on from it. that project caused Zygobot to be the butt of the joke at Full Sail for years and caused out studio to essentially be undesirable as a choice for students this ultimately lead to the breakdown studio leadership as well as applicants, at one point I was afraid I was going to be the only one left in the studio because we were not getting any applicants. This also effected the skills in the studio, not only were we not getting the cream of the crop but skills were not being passed down because people were graduating before they had someone new to pass down their knowledge and experiences too.

After we finally were able to move on from Dino Tank came our next problem which was compounded by the last and that is choosing our next projects. Since there were so few people in the studio and we were in a rush to have something to start working on to get people to come in and apply as well as our lack of experience in choosing new games to work only I and one other people had ideas for a game and those ideas were immediately put into motion without any real discussion thus started WARLORDS and since it was my idea I was also made the producer on the project, a position I knew little of nor had a desire to do but there was no one else. So as I go fumbling on and we get more people in the studio work on WARLORDS starts in earnest and then subsequently within a month has the rug pulled out from underneath it and was cut. There were three primary reasons for this. First there were a number of issues with the documentation there were a few problems with the documentation that should have been addressed in the beginning but weren’t do to my inexperience and the lack of involvement of the studio head in the drafting processes. The second was there wasn’t enough artists in the studio that could or wanted to do 2D art for the project to be completed by the agreed due date. Third the studio head essentially told the people working on the game to stop, and while he might have meant this as a temporary measure and intended to restart production once the issues with the documentation were addressed, member decided they would rather work on their own games instead and the studio head said he would not force them to work on WARLORDS.

What I did that shaped my overall experience

I initially came into this program with the intentions to pursue game writing, however as there were little to no opportunities for game writing I decided to change my focus to game design, while I learned a lot about game design when I did this it ultimately lead to a poor experience when the game I designed was unceremoniously abandoned.

Final takeaways

Considering my knowledge in regards to the game making process was miniscule going into this, one could say I have learned a lot about game design and the game making process. However, at the same time one could say I still have a long way to go and much more to learn about game design and the game making process.

Section III: Recommendations – 10pts

(Based on your experience determine areas of improvement for the project/program. Compile the most important recommendations into a section (one-page maximum). Include a brief explanation of the recommendation(s), the motivation for the change, and how you expect that it will change future student experiences. )

One of the biggest problems plaguing the studios is the lack of stability in them, this is due to the revolving door or talent and ability coming in and leaving every month, as well as the varying degrees of skill. In the postmortem analysis one of the biggest things they recommended was having a focus on teaching the team and improving their skills, however there isn’t anyone who can really do that. for these reason I strongly advise having the “lead” positions in the studios filled by permanent professionals with real industry experience that hold real authority whose primary focus is to teach and oversee the studio, on paper this position is filled by the heads of the studios who are also instructors but in practice this is not the case as their primary focus is their classes so they can’t always be in the studio and it also appears as if they don’t have or refuse to hold authority in the studies leaving almost all the power in the hands of the students who as I stated previously only know about 10% of what they need to know about the industry.

Which leads me to my next issue, which is the degree of control that is afforded to the students over the studios and in the program, I came into the program because I was sold on the idea that I could develop my skills as a game writer. However, there were little to no opportunities to write in either the program or the studios. This is not because there was no the opportunity to write didn’t exist but that the other students either did not see the value in game writing and refused to implement it or it simply wasn’t much writing needed. To address this, instructors need more authority in the program to assure that all students have an opportunity to practice their trade. An example of this would be in the prototyping class where a producer was assigned for the group, if the producer refused to make tasks that include someone’s skill set it should reflect on their grade.

Reference Page

Michael Washburn Jr., Pavithra Sathiyanarayanan, Meiyappan Nagappan, Thomas Zimmermann, Christian Bird (2016). “What Went Right and What Went Wrong”: An Analysis of 155 Postmortems from Game Development. Retrieved from:https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/269064/Study_combs_through_155_Gamasutra_postmortems_for_what_went_right_and_wrong.php?_mc=NL_GAMA_INSIDEGAMA_31032016&elqTrackId=9d686d80763c4e5483f687254feaf595&elq=538101b90dc242f882aaa1ee75014c78&elqaid=68812&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=20381#comments